Latest / The conspiracy / The TERRIFYING Kennedy Curse

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The TERRIFYING Kennedy Curse · The conspiracy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: One family, three generations, nine children, raised on competition, ambition,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: and the expectation that losing wasn't an option, And they
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: put a president in the White House, two brothers in
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: the Senate, and a name on nearly every building that mattered.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: They were considered royalty. But right there beside the successes,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: there were tragedies, assassinations, plane crashes, overdoses, drownings, a son
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: lost to war, a daughter lost to a surgery she
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: never agreed to. The list goes on, and at some
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: point someone in the family said the word out loud, curse,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and once it had a name, the country never let
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: it go. But is it truly a curse? Or is
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: this just what tragedy looks like when it happens to
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the most watched family in America. This is the story
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and conspiracies of the Kennedys. Crime conspiracy, cults, serial killers,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: and murder, all things that I love to consume, and
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I know you do too, you sick just to be
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: of a little actually minded freak. And today we're talking
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: about one of the most well known conspiracy curse tragedy
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: cases ever. And that's all the Kennedys. I've been going
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: down the rabbit hole of the Kennedys. And what I
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: found is pretty shocking and I don't really know what
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: to make of it, but that's what we're getting into today.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: So without further ado, let's unbeckler seatbelts go. I might
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: find on the highway slable of the reks and bustle
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the swindshield into this Kennedy curse together. All right, let's
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• 3:51
  Speaker 1: So the story starts with Joseph Patrick Kennedy senior morn
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty eight in East Boston to a family
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: that was all climbing, and his father PJ. Kennedy, was
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: a Bay State politician and the grandson of an Irish
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: immigrant who during the famine years. And Joe graduated from
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Harvard in nineteen twelve and became president of a small
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: East Boston bank at twenty five, and he was a
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: millionaire by the time he turned thirty, and his appetite
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: for business touched everything he entered. He ran shipyard operations
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: at Bethlehem Steel during the War, produced movies in Hollywood,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and built an extended portfolio in finance and real estate,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: and by nineteen fifty seven Fortune estimated his wealth somewhere
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: between two hundred and four hundred million dollars, and that
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  Speaker 1: landed him on a list of the sixteen richest people
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  Speaker 1: in America, And before his children were old enough to
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: understand money, he'd already set up million dollar trust funds
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: for each of them. Must be nice, so Washington came
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: calling in nineteen thirty four when President Roosevelt tapped him
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: to lead the brand new Securities and Exchange Commission as
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: its first chairman, and once charge, he turned around and
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: outlawed the same Wall Street tricks he'd used to get
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  Speaker 1: rich himself Classic and in nineteen thirty seven he became
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the first Irish American to serve as US Ambassador to
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Great Britain, and Joe used the position to argue for
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: peace with Nazi Germany and against American involvement overseas, and
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Roosevelt would cut ties with him over it, and by
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty Joe was out. But Joe's real ambition had
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: always centered on his children, So going back in time
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: a bit, in nineteen fourteen, he married Rose Fitzgerald, the
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: daughter of John F. Fitzgerald, the former mayor of Boston,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: and her father disapproved, but that hadn't stopped them, and
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: the two carried on a quiet romance for seven years
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: before the wedding, and Rose at this point had been
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: immersed in politics since her younger years, filling in for
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: her shy mother at official events by sixteen years old
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  Speaker 1: and shaking hands with two presidents before she finished school,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: and she was devoutly Catholic, educated at Manhattanville College at
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: the Sacred Heart, and would spend the next eight decades
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: as the family's emotional and spiritual center until pneumonia took
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: her in nineteen ninety five at the age of one
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: hundred and four, and by then the Kennedy family tree
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: had grown to twenty eight grandchildren and forty one great grandchildren.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: So between nineteen fifteen and nineteen thirty two, Rose and
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Joe had nine children, and in birth order, they were
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Joseph Junior, John JFK also called Jack, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia,
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  Speaker 1: Robert RFK also called Bobby, Jean, and Edward or Ted,
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  Speaker 1: and a nineteen thirty one family photograph taken at Hyanna's
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Port shows all of them gathered together with Rose pregnant
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: with the youngest Ted because he wouldn't be born until
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: the following year. So, as we said in the intro,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the Kennedy family household ran on competition, ambition, and high expectations.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Joe pushed political debate at the dinner table and banned
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: small talk. Entirely sounds riveting, super fun and reading the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: New York Times was a household expectation, even for the youngest.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: And outside, they raced sailboats, played brutal games of touch football,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: swung tennis rackets, and throw punches and fights that blurred
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the line between play in and proven yourself, you know,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: good childhood fun. Yet despite all the rivalry, they were
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: fiercely loyal to one another. Years later, Robert would write
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: that his father quote called on the best that was
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  Speaker 1: in us. There was no such thing as half trying, unquote,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: and Joe had a specific design in mind for each
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  Speaker 1: of them. The boys were built for political careers, and
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  Speaker 1: the girls were expected to marry powerful men who would
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: be absorbed into the Kennedy or bit, if you will.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: And the eldest, Joe Junior, was groomed for the presidency,
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  Speaker 1: and when that path was cut short. John stepped forward,
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  Speaker 1: setting aside his plans for a career in writing or academia,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and JFK even joked about his father's financial influence during
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty race night before the election took place.
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  Speaker 1: He wanted to know exactly how many votes it would
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: take to win because he wasn't paying quote unquote for
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  Speaker 1: a landslide. But John will become the thirty fifth president
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  Speaker 1: of the United States, and Robert and Edward both won
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: seats in the US Senate, and Unice Kennedy Shreiver launched
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: the Special Olympics and Jean Kennedy Smith built an organization
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: that brought people with intellectual disabilities into the world of arts.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: So the Kennedys just projected loyalty, glamour, and shared purpose
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  Speaker 1: unlike anything in American politics, and their wealth predated the
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: children's births, and their Catholic faith shaped everything from Rose's
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  Speaker 1: daily devotion to JFK's historic election as the first Catholic president,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: and the family's political reach extended from the Senate floor
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  Speaker 1: to the Oval office, and America called them royalty and
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  Speaker 1: the label stuck. So the idea of this curse didn't
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: come from a journalist or a historian, but from A Kennedy.
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  Speaker 1: And on July twenty fifth, nineteen sixty nine, Ted Kennedy
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  Speaker 1: sat before television cameras inside his father's home and addressed
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  Speaker 1: the nation about an incident on chap Equittic Island one
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  Speaker 1: week earlier. And Ted told the country he'd been hit
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  Speaker 1: by quote a jumble of emotions grief, fear, doubt, exhaustion, panic, confusion,
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  Speaker 1: and shock unquote. And somewhere in the chaos, he said,
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  Speaker 1: one question kept servicing quote whether some awful curse did
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  Speaker 1: actually hang over all the Kennedys unquote. And that was
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  Speaker 1: the first time anyone in the family had said the
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  Speaker 1: word out loud on the record to an audience of millions.
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  Speaker 1: But the feeling had surfaced before in five years earlier,
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four, Ted's small plane had crashed in
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  Speaker 1: a Massachusetts orchard, breaking his back and killing two people
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  Speaker 1: on board, and Bobby Kennedy reportedly said to an aide
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  Speaker 1: named Ed Goodman, quote, somebody up there doesn't like us unquote.
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  Speaker 1: While Bobby's words were private, Ted's were broadcast to the
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  Speaker 1: entire country, and between the two, the idea of a
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  Speaker 1: Kennedy curse found its language and stuck because the Kennedys
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  Speaker 1: were one of the most visible families in the world,
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  Speaker 1: spread across generations, drawn to risk and constantly in public eye.
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  Speaker 1: So any family that large and that exposed, tracked by
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  Speaker 1: cameras and tabloids for over a century will accumulate tragedy naturally.
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  Speaker 1: And the question is whether what happened to the Kennedys
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  Speaker 1: is a pattern that demands an explanation or just life
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  Speaker 1: at a scale most families never reach amplified by fame
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  Speaker 1: until it looks like something more so. Rosemary Marie Kennedy
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  Speaker 1: was born on September thirteenth, nineteen eighteen, the third child
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  Speaker 1: and first daughter to Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald,
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  Speaker 1: and the obstetrician wasn't there yet when Rose went into labor,
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  Speaker 1: so a nurse physically held the baby inside the birth
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  Speaker 1: canal until he arrived, and this delay starved Rosemary of
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  Speaker 1: oxygen and the damage was permanent. So every milestone took
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: her longer than it had her brothers, like crawling, walking,
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  Speaker 1: and just fine motor skills, and Rose and Joe didn't
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: grasp the full picture. Until the younger girls started passing
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: her in developmental terms. And in an era where intellectual
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: disability carried deep stigma and almost no support infrastructure, most
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  Speaker 1: families in their position would have sent her to an
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  Speaker 1: institution sadly, and Joe refused, though, saying the family could
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  Speaker 1: do better for her at home than any facility could,
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  Speaker 1: which is really nice. That's really good. And rose described
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  Speaker 1: her daughter as quote an affectionate, warmly responsive, and loving
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  Speaker 1: girl unquote, eager to earn the compliments she worked so
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  Speaker 1: hard to deserve. And Joe's ambassadorship brought the family to England,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: and Rosemary was placed in a Catholic school operated by nuns,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: and for the first time she actually really thrived, and
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: the nuns were preparing her to work as a teacher's aid.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: But the start of World War Two ultimately brought the
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Kennedy family back to America, and everything Rosemary had gained
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: in England kind of fell apart. So she was an
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: adult now and she wanted the same freedom her brothers
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: and sisters had, and when she didn't get it, she
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: pushed back, and she started sneaking out at night, and
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: in Eunice's words, quote, Rosemary was not making progress, but
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: seemed instead to be going backward unquote. So Joe and
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Rose were worried that she'd be taken advantage of or
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: that her behavior could jeopardize the family's political ambitions. And
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: that's when Joe heard about a prefrontal lobotomy. It was
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: experimental and the American Medical Association hadn't endorsed it, but
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: its pioneers assured him it could help, and Rose knew
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  Speaker 1: nothing about it, and in November of nineteen forty one,
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  Speaker 1: Joe scheduled the lobotomy. And at this point she was
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: twenty three years old, and the surgeons were doctor Walter
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: Freeman and doctor James Watts. And if you don't know
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: what a lobotomy is, essentially they bored two openings into
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Rosemary's skull and fed small metal spatulas through to cut
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  Speaker 1: the connections between her prefrontal cortex and the rest of
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: her brain. And she was conscious for all of it,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: carrying on conversations and reciting poems while they cut, and
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: her silence at the end told them the cutting had
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: gone far enough and the surgery actually destroyed her. She
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: could barely walk, could barely speak, so the person she
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: had been was completely gone now and she was moved
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: to a private psychiatric facility near New York City. Just devastating,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: And in nineteen forty nine they moved her to the
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Saint Coletta School in Jefferson, Wisconsin, and she would never leave,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: and the family told the public she was reclusive, then
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: later that she was mentally ill, which makes me ill
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: to be honest, because it was their fault that she
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: was like this, and took Joe Senior having a massive
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: stroke in nineteen sixty one to change things, And only
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: after he was incapacitated did rose finally visit Rosemary, and
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: the rest of the siblings only then learned where Rosemary
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: had been all those years, because they didn't know, which
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: is horrifying that your sister just goes missing and you
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: don't know why because your dad gave her lobotomy that
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: she should have even gotten in the first place. Just awful.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: And when they saw each other again, Rosemary lashed out
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: at rose and she had no other way to say
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: what she felt, and nobody outside the family knew what
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: had happened to Rosemary until nineteen eighty seven, when historian
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Doris Kerns Goodwin published the details in the Fitzgerald and
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the Kennedys, and the family had kept the secret for
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: forty six years, and her sister, Eunice Kennedy Shreiver, driven
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: by what she'd witnessed, founded the Special Olympics in nineteen
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: sixty eight, which is wonderful. And JFK became the first
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: president to propose and sign major legislation for people with
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: intellectual disabilities, and Ted carried that mission forward in the Senate.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: And on January seventh, two thousand and five, Rosemary passed
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: away from natural causes at eighty six years old, and Jean, Eunice, Patricia,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and Ted were all there at the end, and she
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: now rests buried beside her parents now. Joe Junior was
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the firstborn Kennedy and the one his father had chosen
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: for the White House, and in her memoir, Rose said
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: he had shown quote a certain forcefulness of character that
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: marked him as a natural leader unquote from the time
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: he was young and before the war. He'd represented the
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: family at the nineteen forty Democratic National Convention, and a
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: congressional campaign was supposed to come next, but he enlisted
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: in the Navy as a pilot in June nineteen forty one,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: and he would hit twenty five combat missions by May
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty four and actually qualified to go home, but
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: he refused and flew another twenty five. Guy was a
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: war hero, and Louis Papa, as a fellow pilot, recalled
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: that Joe Junior volunteered for every mission that carried quote
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: unquote extra hazard, earning quote everybody's unlimited admiration and respect unquote,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: and then he signed up for Operation Anvil. It was
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: classified and the target was Nazi fortified bunkers on French soil,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: and the plan was to load a bomber with around
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: twenty two thousand pounds of explosives, and two pilots would
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: take it up, switch on autopilot, and jump out over England,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: and from there a trailing aircraft would fly the unmanned
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: plane by remote control straight into the target. The technology
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: was barely functional, that's like the early nineteen forties at
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: this point, and the program's risks were enormous, and Joe
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: Junior wrote home telling his parents he'd been doing quote
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: something different for the next three weeks unquote, but assured
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: them it wasn't dangerous, and his father wrote back advising
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: him not to force his luck too much. But on
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: August twelfth, nineteen forty four, Joe Junior climbed into the
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: cockpit alongside Copilot Lieutenant Wilford Willie for the Navy's first
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: anvil mission, but they never made it to the bailout point,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: and around six twenty pm, the aircraft blew upon Art
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: in two massive explosions, and one of the pilots watching
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: from the mothership called it, quote the biggest explosion I
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: ever saw until the pictures of the Adam Baum unquote.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: And the bodies naturally were never recovered, and Joe Junior
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: was twenty nine years old at the time, and both
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: he and Willie received the Navy Cross posthumously. Though Tall Boys,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: a new generation of British heavy bombs could destroy those
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: same targets, the drone program failed to achieve a single
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: successful strike, and when the news reached home, JFK reportedly said,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: quote unquote, now the burden falls on me. Kathleen Kick
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Kennedy was the family's rebel, the one sibling who insisted
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: on charting her own course, and she was eighteen when
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: her father's ambassadorship brought her to London, where she was
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: crowned Debutante of the year, and that's where she met
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: William or Billy Keven, Marquis of Harrington, and the two
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: fell hard for each other, and he was Protestant, and
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: her mother was horrified because they're Catholic and he was
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: also in the British Army. Now Rose fought it, but
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Kick went through with a civil ceremony in May nineteen
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: forty four and married Billy anyway, and Joe Junior showed
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: up for the wedding before his passing, and he was
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: the only one in the family who did. And unfortunately
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: the marriage would only last four months because a German
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: sniper killed Billy on the Belgian Front and Joe Junior
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: had died less than a month earlier. And in a letter,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Kick told a friend quote, life holds no fears for
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: someone who has faced love, marriage and death before the
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: age of twenty five quote. And Kick went back to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: England carrying the title Lady Harrington, and eventually she would
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: fall for Peter Fitzwilliam, another wealthy Protestant who was trying
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: to get out of his marriage, and her parents severely
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: disliked the idea and threatened to cut her off entirely.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: In May of nineteen forty eight, Kick and Fitzwilliam flew
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: out to visit Joe in France, but before they could
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: make it, storms drove the aircraft into the mountains, killing
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: everyone on board. And she was twenty eight years old,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: and just like the wedding, Joe Kennedy Senior was the
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: only family member at the funeral, and Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: of Harrington, was laid to rest in a small churchyard
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: in ens Or, England, and the Kennedys barely acknowledged what
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: happened because Kick had been involved with a married man
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: at that point and Jfka was trying to build a
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: political career, so the family couldn't afford a scandal. So
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: even before Dallas, John and Jackie Kennedy faced tragedy within
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: their own home, and they buried two children. Jackie's first
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: pregnancy ended in a miscarriage in nineteen fifty five, and
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the following year she delivered a stillborn daughter by c section,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: and the couple never officially named her, though Jackie would
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: later call her Arabella, and their daughter was buried in
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: a Catholic cemetery in Rhode Island in a grave marked daughter,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: and years later the first family had two healthy children,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Caroline and John Junior. Then, on August seventh, nineteen sixty three,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: Jackie gave birth to Patrick Bouvier Kennedy at Otis Air
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Force Base on Cape Cod roughly five weeks earlier, weighing
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: four pounds and ten and a half ounces. But within hours,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Patrick developed symptoms of Hyellen membrane disease now called the
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: respiratory distress syndrome or RDS, and his lungs were too
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: underdeveloped to manufacture surfactant, the substance that stops in newborn's
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: airsacks from sealing shut, and at the time the disease
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: was killing roughly twenty five thousand babies a year, and
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: he was rushed to the Children's Hospital in Boston and
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: placed inside a hyperbaric chamber, and he lived thirty nine hours,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: and many say his death transformed neonatal medicine, giving rise
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: to the modern nickw and driving new research funding from
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: the National Institutes of Health. So millions of babies were
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: able to live in no small thanks to that research,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: and today roughly ninety five percent of infants diagnosed with
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: RDS survive so all four of them, John, Jackie, Arabella,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: and Patrick are buried together now at Arlington National Cemetery. Now.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born May twenty ninth, nineteen seventeen,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, Massachusetts, and he became the thirty fifth President
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: of the United States on January twentieth, nineteen sixty one,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: serving one thousand and thirty six days before his death
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: at the age of forty six. And he was the
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: first Catholic to hold the office and was beloved during
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: his time in the White House, and his family's influence
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: ignited a whole generation's idealism, referenced through journalist Theodore White's
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: comparison to Arthur's Camelot. And he championed the US space program,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: navigated the Cuban missile crisis without a nuclear exchange, and
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the Equal Pay Act.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: And though his presidency only bore the weight of the
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Bay of Pigs invasion, the standoff over Berlin, and the
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: early escalation in Vietnam. Before politics, he'd been a Navy
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: officer in the Pacific during World War Two, and a
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Japanese destroyer sank his patrol torpedo boat in the Solomon Islands,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: and Kennedy led his surviving crew to safety, earning the
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Navy and Marine Corpse Medal. An anchorman Walter Cronkite later
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: reflected on the Kennedy era, saying, quote, Kennedy seemed to
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: be leading us into a new era of youthful exuberance
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: over the fun of life, the fun a country could have,
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: being itself, being important to the world. We were dancing
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: on clouds, unquote. And Bob Schieffer with CBS News called him,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: quote the technicolor President, unquote, saying America had quote sort
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: of seen the presidency in black and white up until
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: that point. So on November twenty first, nineteen sixty three,
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: the President and the First Lady flew to Texas and
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: met up with Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to motorcade
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: through cities, and the trip doubled as a political mission,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and Texas Democrats were feuding and Kennedy needed the state
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: for re election in nineteen sixty four, and his first
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: stops in San Antonio, Houston, and Fort Worth drew warm crowds,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: and Kennedy gave a speech in Fort Worth that morning.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Then the group flew the short hop to Dallas Lovefield,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: one of the airports there, and former KRLD reporter Bob
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Huffaker recalled that day began gray and cold with a
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: missing rain, and then the skies opened into a beautiful
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: blue morning and the clear skies overhead. The bubble top
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: came off the presidential limousine and the crowd of love
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Field was enthusiastic, and Kennedy and Jackie worked the fence line,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: then settled into the back of an open convertible, and
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Texas Governor John Connolly and his wife Nelly sat on
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: the jump seats in front of them, and the route
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: to the Trademark, where Kennedy was due to give a speech,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: ran roughly ten miles, and it estimated two hundred thousand
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: people packed both sides of it. Now, the motorcade swung
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: into downtown Dallas, and Nellie Connolly turned to Kennedy from
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the jump seat, quote, well, mister President, you can't say
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Dallas doesn't love you, unquote. And then at around twelve
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: thirty pm, the limousine continued on Elm Street, heading toward
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: the Triple Underpass, and that's when shots rang out and
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: around hit the base of Kennedy's neck and tore out
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: through his throat, and the Warren report held that the
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: same bullet then hit Governor Connolly in the rib, wrist,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: and thigh, and a second bullet struck the president in
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the back of the head, and Connolly, a lifelong hunter,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: knew the sound instantly quote unquote the crack of a
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: hunting rifle, and the motorcade proceeded to Parkland Memorial Hospital
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and doctor Kenneth Sallier, on neurosurgery call recalled a large,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: jagged wound on the right side to the President's skull
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: with pieces missing. Jackie was at the back of the
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: room the entire time with her dress still covered in blood,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: and at one pm John F. Kennedy was declared dead
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: and Walter Cronkite broke the news, though the network didn't
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: have a live camera running and the audience got nothing
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: but his voice laid over a static card on screen.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Here is a bulletin from CBS News in Dallas, Texas.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: Three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: And once the death was confirmed, Cronkite addressed the nation.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: From Dallas, Texas. The flash apparently official President. Kennedy died
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: at one pm Central Standard time two o'clock Eastern Standard time,
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: some thirty eight minutes ago.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: And his producer Sandy Sikalo described, quote, there were so
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: many questions to be answered, who was the murderer and
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: why did he do it? Unquote? And once everyone stepped out,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Jackie went back to her husb husband, and she rested
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: on his chest, removed a ring and placed it on
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: his finger. Now Vice President Lyndon Johnson had been riding
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: three cars behind Kennedy in the motorcade, and he went
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: back to Air Force one at love Field of bringing
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: the former president's body with him in a bronze casket.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Johnson would take the presidential oath at two thirty eight pm,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: becoming the thirty sixth president of the United States, and
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Jackie stood beside him, still wearing her pink suit, still
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: covered in her husband's blood, and his first public statement
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: as president was quote, we have suffered a loss that
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep personal tragedy.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: I know that the world shares the sorrow that missus
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: That is all I can do. I ask for your
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: help and God's unquote. And Johnson established November twenty fifth
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: as a day of national mourning, and more than eight
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand mourners stowed along Pennsylvania Avenue as a horse
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: drawn casin bore Kennedy's flag dre coffin from the Capitol
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Rotunda to Saint Matthew's Catholic Cathedral, and alongside the procession
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: walked a riderless horse named black Jack Moots reversed in
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: an empty saddle a military tribute to the fallen, and
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: outside the cathedral, three year old John F. Kennedy Junior
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: raised his hand and saluted his father's casket, and they
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: laid Kennedy to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with full
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: military honors and leaders from many different nations attended, and
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Jackie lit the eternal flame that has burned at his
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: gravesite ever since. And by two fifteen that afternoon, before
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: the country had even absorbed what happened, Dallas police had
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: already arrested a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. Now Oswald
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: was a new employee at the Texas school Book Depository,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: and he had been charged with Kennedy's assassination and with
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: the fatal shooting of Dallas patrolman J. D. Tippett, who
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: was killed roughly forty five minutes after his president was hit,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: and Oswald denied any involvement during police questioning, telling reporters quote,
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: I didn't shoot anybody, no, sir, I'm just a patsy unquote.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: And two days later, on Sunday morning, November twenty fourth,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: police were transferring Oswald to the county jail when a
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: Dallas nightclub owner named Jack Ruby shot Oswald point blank
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: in the stomach on live television in front of the press,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: and Oswald died at Parkland Memorial Hospital, and it was
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the same building where forty eight hours earlier the president
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: had died. So with Oswald dead, there would be no trial,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: no public cross examination of the evidence, and no definitive
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: resolution to the question surrounding November twenty second, and a
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: jury convicted Ruby of murder and gave him the death penalty,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: though an appeals court later threw out the verdict, but
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: still he died on January third, nineteen sixty seven, from
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: a blood clot complicated by cancer before any retrial could begin,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: and a special presidential commission led by Chief Justice Earl
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Warren spent months investigating the astssassination, and its conclusion was
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: that Oswald acted alone, firing every shot that killed the president,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: and the Commission saw nothing tying either him or Ruby
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: to a larger plot. But most Americans never fully accepted
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the Commission's conclusion, and when five point thirty eight pulled
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the public in twenty seventeen, just one in three Americans
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: said they believed Oswald acted alone. Not me. I'm not
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: one of those, and that's why this is a conspiracy podcast.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: And an onlooker named Abraham Zapruder had captured the assassination
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: on film, and its frames raised questions the official account
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: struggled to answer, and the commission's account held that three
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: rounds left Oswald's rifle in eight point six seconds, and
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: one bullet supposedly passed through Kennedy and then struck Governor
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: Connolly as we know. The critics called it the magic
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: bullet theory, arguing a single round could not cause that
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: much damage and remain nearly intact, and others pointed to
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: a grassy knull head and to the right of the
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: motorcade as the position of a second shooter and broader
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: theories implicated the CIA, organized crime, and Cuban exiles, and
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, a House Select Committee on Assassinations
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: concluded after a two year investigation, that a second gunman
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: had probably fired and that Kennedy was quote unquote probably
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: assassinated as a result of a conspiracy, and the committee
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: also found that the Soviet government, the Cuban government, a CIA,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: the FBI, and the Secret Service were not involved, though
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: it could not rule out individual members of organized crime
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: or anti Castro groups acting independently, and the committee faulted
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: the Warren Commission for not digging deep enough into whether
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: a conspiracy existed, and the files stayed partly sealed for
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: decades despite a nineteen ninety two law requiring full release
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: within twenty five years, and President Biden delayed disclosure on
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: three separate occasions. And on January twenty third, twenty twenty five,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: President Trump signed an executive order directing officials to present
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: plans for the release of assassination records for JFK. Robert F. Kennedy,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: and Martin Luther King Junior, and the National Archives released
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: more than seventy seven thousand pages on March eighteenth, twenty
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: twenty five, and historians noted the documents did not change
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: the Lone Gunman finding, though they shed new light on
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: CIA covert programs from the early nineteen sixties, including the
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: recruitment of agents within Fidel Castro's government, and biographer Frederick
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Logval flagged one hole the new documents still hadn't closed
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: his weeks before the assassination, Oswald traveled to Mexico City
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: and sat down with diplomats from both Cuba and the
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Soviet Union, and when the signing was finished, Trump passed
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: the pen to an aid quote unquote give that to
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: RFK Junior and Robert F. Kennedy Junior, the slain President's nephew,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: told NBC News he was quote very grateful to President
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Trump unquote. So seven months after the events in Dallas,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Ted Kennedy nearly died in a plane crash, and on
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the evening of June nineteenth, nineteen sixty four, the thirty
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: two year old senator left Washington for the Massachusetts State
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Democratic Convention, where he'd be renominated by acclamation, and he
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: had stayed in the capitol all day for the final
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: vote on the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: and it was dark by the time he could fly out,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: and the twin engine aerrow Commander carried five people Ted,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Indiana Senator Birch Buy and his wife Marvella and legislative
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: aide Edward Moss and pilot Edwin Zimney, and fog and
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: drizzle had closed in by the time they neared Barnes
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Municipal Airport in Westfield, Massachusetts just before eleven PM, and
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: the plane slammed into an apple orchard just three miles
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: short of the runway, and Ted watched the ultimeter plunge
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: from eleven hundred feet to six hundred and he compared
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: it to a toboggan ride along the tree tops followed
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: by aolent collision with a tree, and Zimney and Moss
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: both died overnight from their injuries, and birch and Marvella
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Bye walked away with minor injuries from their seats at
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: the back of the plane. And Ted broke three vertebrae
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: and two ribs and suffered a collapsed lung and birch
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: By actually pulled him from the wreckage, and Ted was
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: hospitalized for five months after that, immobilized in a frame
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: that held his broken vertebrae in place, and Harvard professors
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: came to his hospital room and lectured at his bedside,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: and he tore through stacks of books between visits, and
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: this is the crash that spurred Bobby to say his
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: quote unquote, somebody up there doesn't like us line. And
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: though ted recovered, Bobby would meet a similar fate to JFK. So.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Robert Francis Kennedy or RFK, had served as Attorney General
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: in his brother's administration from nineteen sixty one to nineteen
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: sixty four and won a US Senate seat from New
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: York in nineteen sixty five. But before politics, he'd enlisted
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: in the Navy during World War Two, serving from nineteen
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: forty four to nineteen forty six. And Bobby declared his
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: run for the Democratic presidential nomination on March sixteenth, nineteen
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: sixty eight, standing in the Senate Caucus room in Washington,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: and his brother JFK had stood in that same room
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: eight years earlier to launch his own White House bid,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and Vietnam had defined his candidacy because he campaigned to
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: end the war while openly admitting that he had helped
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: extend it during his years as JFK's top advisor in
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: fighting poverty and racial inequality became the foundation of his platform,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: and he won primaries in Indiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Washington,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: d C. And on the night of June fourth, nineteen
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: sixty eight, Bobby won the California primary, meeting Minnesota Senator
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Eugene McCarthy forty six percent to forty two percent. At
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: around midnight, he delivered a victory speech at the Ambassador
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Hotel in Los Angeles, and his wife Ethel was now
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: next to him, three months pregnant with their eleventh child,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: and he closed with a line to the crowd saying, quote,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: so my thanks to all of you, and now it's
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: on to Chicago and let's win there unquote. And at
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: twelve fifteen am, Bobby left the stage and was led
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: through a service store and he leaned over the counter
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: to shake hands with a seventeen year old bus boy
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: named Juan Romero. And just then a man named Sir
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Hans Sirhan, armed with a twenty two caliber revolver, rushed
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: forward and opened fire, and three bullets struck Bobby. One
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: graced his forehead and another went through his neck and
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: the third went through his right ear, killing him and
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: five bystanders were also wounded from this attack, and Sirhan
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: was tackled at the scene. And Robert Kennedy died at
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: one forty four am on June sixth, nineteen sixty eight,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: at the age of forty two, and his wife Ethel,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: his sisters Jean and Patricia, and his sister in law
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Jackie were at his bedside, and a funeral mass was
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: held two days later at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: and Ted delivered the eulogy, quote, my brother need not
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: in life, to be remembered simply as a good and
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: decent man who saw wrong and tried to write it,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: tried to stop it unquote. And his casket rode a
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: funeral train two hundred and twenty five miles from Penn
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: Station in Manhattan to Union Station in Washington, while tens
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: of thousands of warners lined the tracks along the road,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: and Bobby was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, fifty feet
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: from his brother JFK and his assassination led to the
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: extension of Secret Service protection of all major presidential candidates
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: now Sirhan. Sirhan had grown up in Pasadena, California, after
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: his family emigrated from Jerusalem in the nineteen fifties, and
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: the Six Day War in June nineteen sixty seven stirred
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: something within him, and he focused his frustration on Kennedy
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: after hearing the senator voice support for Israeli during the
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: presidential race, and on the eve of the assassination, he
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: reportedly said, quote unquote, I did it for my country,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: and it happened on the one year anniversary of the
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Six Day War. And he was convicted of murder on
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: April seventeenth, nineteen sixty nine, and sentenced to death, and
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: California Supreme Court later struck down the state's death penalty
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and his sentence was reduced to life in prison, and
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Sirhan faced years of parole battles and appeals, and his lawyer,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, William F. Pepper, filed an appeal for
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: a retrial using a second gunman theory and a brainwashing
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: plot to make Sirhan the fall guy. In Questions about
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: a second gunman have persisted for decades because the kill
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: shot hit Bobby behind the right ear from inches away.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Yet every witness who saw the shooting put Sirhan face
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: to face with Kennedy when he pulled the trigger. In
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: an audio analysis of the shooting detected thirteen shots, though
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Sirhan's revolver held only eight rounds and Paul Shad, one
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: of the five bystanders wounded that had testified against sir
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Han at the original trial, and by twenty sixteen he
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: had reversed his position, and he told the parole board
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: that he no longer believed sir Han was the one
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: who killed Kennedy, pointing to what he called clear evidence
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: of a second gunman. So just more conspiracy and whether
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: the case should be open is a question that has
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: fractured the Kennedy family down the middle. RFK Junior went
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: to see sir Han behind bars and came away believing
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: the conviction may have landed on the wrong person, and
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: his sister, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, shares that view and has
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: called for the investigation to be reopened, but their siblings,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Joseph Kennedy the Second and Carrie Kennedy oppose it. Mary
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Joe Kopecne was twenty eight years old and had worked
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: for the Kennedys, New Jersey born and raised, she campaigned
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: for JFK as a college student, spend time teaching at
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: a Catholic mission school in Alabama, and landed a position
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: in Robert Kennedy's Senate office, and when Bobby launched his
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight presidential bid, she was one of the
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: people writing his speeches, and on the night of July eighteenth,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, she was on chap Equittic Island for
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: a cookout that Ted Kennedy had helped organize, and the
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: guest list included Kennedy, five other men, and six women
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: from Bobby's campaign staff, a group known as the boiler
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Room Girls. At around eleven fifteen pm, Kennedy left the
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: party with Kopecny, and Kennedy's account was that Kopecne wasn't
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: feeling well, and the two of them left to catch
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: the ferry to Edgar Town, where they were staying at
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: separate hotels. In the car, a black Oldsmobile left the
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Dyke Bridge and flipped into pouch a pond, coming to
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: rest upside down in the tidal water and Kennedy got
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: out of the submerged car, but Kopeckney remained trapped inside,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: and he said he dove repeatedly into what he described
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: as a strong and murky current, trying to reach her,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: until exhaustion forced him to stop, and he made his
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: way to the cottage and brought back two friends, Joseph
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Gargan and Markham, and they dove in after Capecney two,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: but neither one could reach her. But at this point
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Kennedy still didn't call the police, and he told Gargan
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: and Markham to drive him to the ferry landing and
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: the fairy had stopped running for that night, so Kennedy
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: jumped in and swam the channel to Edgar Town, making
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: it back to his hotel by about two am, and
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: morning came before Kennedy contacted police, finally reaching them at
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: around ten am on July nineteenth, more than ten hours
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: after the crash, and by then her body had already
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: been found and diver John Ferrar found Capeckney still inside
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: the vehicle, and she was positioned with her face against
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the footwell, both hands clutching the rear of the front seat,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: and it looked like she had been lifting her head
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: into a pocket of air near the floorboard, which meant
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: she likely survived for some time after the car sank,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: and by the time Kennedy finally reported what happened, any
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: chance to test his blood alcohol level was gone, and
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: without that evidence, prosecutors couldn't build an involuntary manslaughter case.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: But he entered a guilty plea for leaving the scene
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: of an accident, and Judge James Boyle gave him the
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: lightest punishment available, which was only two months in jail,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: and then he suspended every day of it, and his
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: license was suspended for sixteen months. And a grand jury
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: convened the following April and returned no further indictments, and
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Mary Joe Kopeckney's mother, when later said, quote, this is
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: the big hurt, the nightmare we have to live with
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: for the rest of our lives, that Mary Joe was
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: left in the water for nine hours. She didn't belong there, unquote.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: And one week after the accident, on July twenty fifth,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Ted addressed the nation and he called his failure to
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: report the crash immediately indefensible, and he denied any romantic
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: involvement with Kopeckney, and he asked aloud whether quote, some
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys unquote,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: and the speech ended with a question to the people
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: of Massachusetts, should he give up his Senate seat? But
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: he never did, and before the accident many supporters had
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: expected him to run for president in nineteen seventy two,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: and Kennedy announced he would set out the race, and
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: he passed on nineteen seventy six as well, and he
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: finally entered the race in nineteen eighty as the early favorite,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: leading the incumbent Jimmy Carter two to one in polls
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: of Democratic voters, and his campaign believed the bridge had
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: faded from public memory, but it had not, and Carter
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: defeated him for the nomination, and in the end, brain
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: cancer would take Kennedy in two thousand and nine, and
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: he had spent every year since Chapiquittic and few legislators
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: in the country carried more respect, but the White House
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: was never his Now until this point, the tragedies had
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: primarily befallen on the generations that built the family dynasty.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Starting in the nineteen seventies, the pattern shifted to their children,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: Ted Kennedy ju jun Year, was twelve years old and
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: in seventh grade when he noticed a lump below his
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: knee and he assumed it was a bruise from football
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: or something. But then the diagnosis came and it came
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: back as bone cancer, and at the time, survival rates
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: for it were grim, and Ted Senior brought on cologists
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: to the family's Virginia home for a meeting to weigh
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: on how to treat his son. And the science of
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: chemotherapy was still pretty primitive at this point, and no
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: one could guarantee that putting a twelve year old on
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: an experimental regimen would help more than it hurt, So
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: they chose amputation and surgeons would take his right leg
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: above the knee, and after that came two years of
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: metatre sate, a drug designed to destroy cancer selves with
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: vitamin injections administered after each round, and the trips from
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Virginia to Boston for treatment happened on a three week cycle,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: with either his mother or his father making the drive,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: and his father figured out how to give the injections
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: himself actually, which meant shorter hospital stays, and whenever Boston
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: had a bruins or Celtics game. During those visits, the
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: two of them would go. And there are people who
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: believe the senator sat out the nineteen seventy six presidential
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: race for one reason, and that was to stay at
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: his son's side until the cancer was beaten and Ted
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Junior survived and the cancer never came back. And by
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: his teenage years he was competing with the US handicapped
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: ski team and brought home several national medals, and he
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: served as an advocate pushing for the Americans with Disabilities Act,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: which President George H. W. Bush signed into law in
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety and he went on to practice healthcare law,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: win a Connecticut State Senate seat, and serve on the
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: boards of organizations including Special Olympics International. Now his story
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: is a rare hopeful note peeking through the timeline. And
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: then there was David Anthony Kennedy, who was Robert and
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: Ethel's fourth child, and when he was little, his father
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: pulled him out of the water after he came close
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: to drowning, and the very next day he sat in
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: of the television and watched his father get shot to
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: death in a hotel kitchen. And he was around twelve
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: years old. And unfortunately he turned to drugs to quiet it,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: and a nineteen seventy three car accident started him on painkillers,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: and addiction took hold, and rehab after rehab failed to
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: break it, and in April of nineteen eighty four, the
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: family gathered in Palm Beach for Easter and David was
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: staying at the Brazilian Court hotel and the people around
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: him could see he was just falling apart, and his
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: brother Douglas saw the deterioration firsthand, and on April nineteenth,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: he saw David swallowing what looked like sleeping pills. By
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: the twenty second David was drinking through the day, visibly
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: paranoid and jumpy, which Douglas blamed on cocaine, and David
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: stopped by his grandmother Rose's villa by the Ocean on
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: April twenty third, while she was in declining health, and
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: authorities suspected he walked out of that visit with some
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: of Rose's prescription medication, and on April twenty fifth, nineteen
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: eighty four, David was unfortunately found dead in his hotel
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: room at the age of twenty eight, and a woman
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: named marian Neeman joined David for dinner two nights before
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: he died, as she told police, he couldn't stop crying
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: and was in obvious despair, and according to Neeman, he
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: put away about seven Vodkas that night and told her
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: he'd already used cocaine earlier, and back in his hotel room,
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: he pulled out a plastic bag of powder out and
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: snorted it, saying the bell boy had supplied it, and
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: the cause of David's death, according to the medical examiner,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: was combined as an overdose cocaine, demarole and a sedative,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: and two hotel bell hops were later charged with supplying
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: him cocaine. And then there's Michael Kennedy, who grew up
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: as one of Bobby and Ethel's eleven kids, and he
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: was ten when his father was assassinated, and by adulthood
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: he was running Citizen Energy Corporation, which provided heating fuel
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: to families who couldn't afford it, and he had managed
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Ted Kennedy's nineteen ninety four Senate reelection bid. And on
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: New Year's Eve nineteen ninety seven, the family was on
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: a vacation in Aspen, Colorado, and they were playing football
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: on the ski slopes tossing a snow packed water bottle
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: back and forth while skiing, which was a tradition the
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: ski patrol had warned them about before. And Michael went
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: out for a pass on an immediate slope called Copper Bowl,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: and he caught the bottle and slammed head first into
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: a tree. And he had a camera in his hands
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: the whole time, trying to capture the game while skiing.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: And at this point it was dusk, so the mountain
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: was pretty dark, and that meant icy surface, which is
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: really dangerous when you're going really fast down a mountain
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: on skis. And ski patrol reached him within four minutes
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: and he was taken to Aspen Valley Hospital and pronounced
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: dead from head injuries at five point fifty PM at
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: the age of thirty nine. And a witness named Corey
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: Hay described it all saying, quote, there was blood all
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: over the snow, Several of the Kennedys were on their
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: knees saying the Lord's prayer unquote. And then there was
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: John Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior, who was born on November twenty fifth,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, less than three weeks after his father won
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: the presidency. And he was the first infant to live
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: in the White House since eighteen ninety three, and he
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: was widely referred to as John John, a nickname that
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: started when a reporter misheard his father calling John twice
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: in a row, and the family never used it, but
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: the country did. And he was three days short of
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: his third birthday when his father was killed and his
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: mother told him to salute the casket, and the photograph
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: of that moment became one of the most recognized images
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. So the whole country watched him
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: grow up in its living room, and in nineteen eighty eight,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: People magazine named the twenty seven year old now law
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: student the sexiest man alive, and tabloids tracked his every move,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: calling him America's most eligible bachelor. And he graduated from
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: NYU's Law school in nineteen eighty nine, failed the bar
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: exam twice, then passed on his third attempt, and as
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: a Manhattan Assistant District Attorney now he tried six cases
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: and won every single one, and in nineteen ninety five
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: he launched George, a glossy political magazine that covered Washington
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: through a pop culture lens with celebrities posing as the
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: founding fathers on its cover, and in nineteen ninety six
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: he married Carolyn Bissett, a Kelvin Klein public relations professional,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: in a private ceremony held at Cumberland Island, Georgia, and
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Christopher Anderson, who wrote the Day John died, put it
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: this way, saying, if the Kennedys were American royalty, John
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: Junior was their crown prince. And on the evening of
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: July sixteenth, nineteen ninety nine, John Junior climbed into a
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: single engine Piper Saratoga at airfield in Fairfield, New Jersey,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: and his wife, Carolyn, who was thirty three, and her sister,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: Lauren Bissett, who was thirty four, were with him, and
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: the plane was to drop Lauren at Martha's vineyard then
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: fly on the Hyennis Port for his cousin Rory's wedding
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: the next day, but they were late before they started.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Traffic in Manhattan delayed all three of them and they
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: didn't reach the airfield until around eight pm, and the
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: plane lifted off at eight thirty eight pm, roughly twenty
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: four minutes after sunset, and John Junior held a private
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: pilot's license, sought no instrument rating, meaning he was certified
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: to fly only when he could see the horizon, and
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: he'd logged about three hundred and ten total hours in
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: the air but only around three of those were so
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: low time in this particular aircraft. And he was also
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: still recovering from a broken left ankle fractured in a
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: hang gliding accident that June, so the cast was off,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: but the injury had forced flight instructors to step in
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: twice already to handle the rudder pedals and bring the
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: plane down during lessons. So why he thought this was
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: a good idea is beyond me. And one of his
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: instructors volunteered to come along for the slight, but John
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: Junior turned him down, saying quote he wanted to do
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: it alone, and the same instructor later admitted the combination
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: of that route at night, the haze and John Junior's
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: experience level would have kept him from signing off on
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: the flight. So about thirty four miles from Martha's Vineyard,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: the plane began descending from fifty five hundred feet and
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: thick haze hung over the water, erasing any line between
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: sky and ocean, and another pilot who covered that stretch
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: of sky. The same evening described looking towards Martha's vineyard
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: and seeing nothing, saying, quote, there was nothing to see.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: There was no horizon and no light unquote. And at
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: approximately nine thirty eight PM, the radar track turned erratic,
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: sharp turns, sudden climbs, steep drops, and John Junior had
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: lost his spatial reference and couldn't tell which way was up,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: and the plane locked into a tightening right turn, nose
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: falling and speed starting to build a pattern aviator's call
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: a graveyard spiral, and by nine forty one the aircraft
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: hit the Atlantic at a descent rate exceeding forty seven
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: hundred feet per minute, and he had filed no flight plan,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: made no radio contact the entire trip, and sent no
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: distress call, and there were no survivors, and by ten
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: PM the plane had not reached Martha's Vineyard, and Lauren's
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: friends called the airport looking for answers, and a Kennedy
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: family friend reached the Coastguard at two fifteen am, and
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: the Air National Guard, NOAA, and the Navy joined the effort,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: with five states contributing resources, and wreckage began washing ashore
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: on Martha's vineyard the next day, and on July twentieth,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: searchers deployed a remote operated vehicle and found the wreckage
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: on the ocean floor eight miles out and one hundred
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: and twenty feet down, and divers recovered the bodies the
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: following afternoon on July twenty first, and all three remained
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: in their seats, belts fastened, and autopsies confirmed they died
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: on impact, And on July twenty second, a Navy destroyer
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: returned the ashes to the waters where the plane went down,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: and the family held a short service and the ashes
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: were scattered at sea at A memorial service was held in
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: the Church of Saint Thomas More in New York the
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: next day, and Ted spoke saying, quote dared to think,
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: live to comb gray hair with his beloved Carolyn by
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: his side. But like his father, he had every gift
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: but length of years. And John was only thirty eight
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: when he died, younger than his father had been in Dallas.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: And the National Transportation Safety Board released its findings a
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: year later, and the cause was spatial disorientation during a
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: descent over water at night, compounded by Hayes and darkness,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: and investigators found no mechanical failure, no engine trouble, and
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: no sign of foul play. And when investigators pulled the
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: altitude indicator from the wreckage, it read one hundred and
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: twenty five degrees of right bank in thirty degrees nose down,
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: consistent with a classic graveyard spiral. And obviously, conspiracy theories surfaced,
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: as they always do when a Kennedy dies, but the
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: physical evidence seems to leave no room for them in
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: this case. So Kara Kennedy was a television producer and
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: the eldest of Ted Kennedy's three children, and doctors found
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: lung cancer in two thousand and two and said the
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: tumor couldn't be removed, and her father tracked down a
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston willing to operate,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: and the team cut away part of her right lung
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: and put her through chemotherapy and radiation, and according to
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: her mother, Joan Bennett Kennedy, the cancer was behind her
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: and Kara swam walked the beach and lived without restrictions
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: quote unquote. She was very healthy. Joan would tell the
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: Associated Press and go on to say quote, that's why
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: this is such a shock unquote. But on September sixteenth,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: twenty eleven, Kara collapsed during a workout at her Washington,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: DC gym. She was fifty one years old, and her
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: brother Patrick told the press that the years of aggressive
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: treatment had weakened her heart, saying, quote her heart gave
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: out unquote end quote. She's with dad unquote, and their
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: father had died of brain cancer two years earlier. So
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Syrsha Kennedy Hill was twenty two and a Boston College
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: communications major and the grand of Robert F. Kennedy through
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: his daughter Courtney, and she spent time in Mexico constructing
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: schools for indigenous communities, and her family said she was
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: quote unquote moved by the causes of human rights and
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: women's empowerment, and in twenty sixteen, she published a piece
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: in the Deerfield Academy school paper laying out her year's
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: long fighte with depression, saying, quote, my depression took root
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: in the beginning of my middle school years and will
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: be with me for the rest of my life unquote.
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: And she would continue to say quote, although I was
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: mostly a happy child, I suffered bouts of deep sadness
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: that felt like a heavy boulder on my chest unquote.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: So on the evening of July thirty first, twenty nineteen,
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Sysha ate dinner at the family home in Hyenas Port
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: with her ninety one year old grandmother Ethel, and afterwards
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: she headed to Embargo, a nearby bar and saying karaoke
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: with friends, and later that morning she made it back
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: to the compound, walked down to the ocean for sunrise swim,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: and finally crawled into bed around six thirty am. And
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: when she still hadn't gotten up by early afternoon, the
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: family grew worried and paramedics arrived around two pm and
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: Sirsha lay unconscious and unresponsive still in her bed, and
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: she was pronounced dead at Cape Cod Hospital at three
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: fourteen pm, and her official cause of death was an
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: accidental combination of methadone, diazepam and fluoxetine and alcohol. And
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: the death kind of echoed David's from the years prior.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: So Mayve Kennedy McKean had built a career in public
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: health and human rights law, running Georgetown University's Global Health
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: Initiative as its executive director, and her mother was former
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, making Mave a granddaughter
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: of Robert F. Kennedy, and during the early weeks of
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: COVID in April of twenty twenty, Mave's family had moved
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: into her mother's waterfront property in Shady Side, Maryland, where
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: the kids could spread out more than their Crampedy Sea home,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: and on the afternoon of April second, Mave, who was
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: forty years old, and her eight year old son Gideon,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: paddled the canoe into the water to retrieve a kickball
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: that had blown off the yard, and that afternoon, winds
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: ran fifteen to twenty miles per hour, with gusts hitting
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: thirty five miles per hour, but trees and houses along
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: the shore shielded the backyard and kept conditions feeling calm.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: But once they cleared the cove, the full wind hit,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: pushing them into the water on Chesapeake Bay, and they
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: capsized roughly two and a half miles out in water
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: that measured fifty one degrees, and crews searched for five days,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: scanning the bay floor with underwater sonar, and divers pulled
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: May from the water on April sixth and two days later,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: on April eighth, they located Gideon in roughly twenty five
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: feet of water, more than two miles south of his
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: grandmother's property, and in a public statement, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: said her daughter had quote dedicated her life to society's
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: most vulnerable quote, and she remembered Gideon as a loving
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: big brother with a gift for sports, riddles, math and checks.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: So this was just a tragic loss of two generations
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: in one accident. So. Tatiana Schlosberg's parents were diplomat Carolyn
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: Kennedy and artist Edwin Skolsburg, and she was one of
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: JFK's three grandchildren, and she graduated from Yale and Oxford,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: reported on science for the New York Times, and wrote
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: a book called Inconspicuous Consumption about hidden environmental costs. And
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: on May twenty fifth, twenty twenty four, she gave birth
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: to her second child, but a routine blood panel during
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: delivery came back wrong and her white cell count was
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: far too high, and doctors ordered additional testing and results
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: showed acute myalloid leukemia marked by a rare inversion three mutation,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: and doctors admitted her to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital for five weeks,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: then transferred her to chemotherapy at home, and her sister
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: donated a stem cell transplant, and Tatiana went into remission,
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: but the cancer would unfortunately return, and a New Yorker
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: essay published November twenty second, twenty twenty five, she would write,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: quote my doctor told me that he could keep me
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: alive for a year. Maybe my first thought was that
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: my kids, whose faces lived permanently on the inside of
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: my eyelids, wouldn't remember me, unquote. And in the same essay,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: she called her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Junior, quote unquote,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: an embarrassment to me and the rest of my family,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: and she described lying in her hospital bed watching his
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: cabinet confirmation go through despite a resume with no experience
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: in medicine, public health, or government. And Tatiana died on
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: December thirtieth, twenty twenty five, at the age of thirty five,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: the most recent loss in the long line of Kennedy deaths,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: showing that even in present day, the curse stays relevant.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: And she's left behind her husband, George Moren, and their
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: two children. And the tragedies didn't just stop at blood relatives,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: they kind of rippled outward through marriages, in laws and
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: extended family. Now, of course, there's a rational explanation for
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: all of this. Edward Kennedy Junior, who lost his life
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: to cancer at twelve and watched his family absorb loss
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: after loss, said, quote, the Kennedy family has had to
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: endure these things in a very open way. But our
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: family is just like every other family in America in
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: many ways unquote. And his aunt Eunice dismissed the whole
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: idea and the real problem, she said, was a NonStop
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: tabloid coverage and a family that was never allowed to
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: grieve in private. And Jay Randy Terra Borley, who wrote
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: the Kennedy Airs, told people that the family itself largely
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: rejected the idea of a curse, noting that Ted's speech
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: after Chapiquitic was the lone exception. An author Les Williams
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: went further, arguing the pattern traces back to a single source,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: Joe Kennedy Senior, and in The Kennedy Curse Shattered, he
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: wrote that Joe quote raised his children to believe that
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: they were better than anyone else and that they had
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: to win every time, and at any cost unquote, and
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: that his obsessive ambition quote would have disastrous consequences for
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: the family over the years unquote. And Patrick Kennedy framed
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: it differently in his twenty fifteen book A Common Struggle,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: pointing to untreated mental illness and addiction as the thread
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: of running through decades of loss, from Rosemary's lobotomy to
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: David's overdose. And it's not hard to see the skeptics
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: view here. A sprawling, wealthy, competitive family that flew private planes,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: held public office, and lived under constant scrutiny for over
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: a century was always going to accumulate grief at a
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: visible scale. And probability alone can account for every single
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: one of these tragedies. But even the rational mind can
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: start to associate patterns, and not all of the Kennedys
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: fully dismissed the idea, and Ted stood before those cameras
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine and wondered aloud whether some awful
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: curse hung over his family. And after rfk's death, Jackie
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: told those around her, quote, if they're killing Kennedy's, then
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: my children are targets. I want to get out of
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: this country unquote. And she married onassas before the year
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: was over, and in November of twenty twenty five, Tatiana Schlosberg,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: JFK's granddaughter, wrote, quote, now I have added a new
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: tragedy to her life, to our family's life, and there's
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: nothing I can do to stop it, unquote. And five
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: weeks later she was gone, three generations apart, and the
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: language barely changed. And after her husband was killed, Jackie
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: sat down with Life magazine and she invoked the musical
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: Camelot and quoted the line JFK had loved most, saying, quote,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: don't let it be forgot that once there was a
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: spot for one brief, shining moment that was known as
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: Camelot unquote, And she wanted the country to remember what
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: it had lost, and the country obliged. And every tragedy
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: that followed added another verse to the same story. So
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: whether you call it a curse, a consequence, or just
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: you know, the weight of living in the public eye
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: for that long, the result is the same. One family
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: just absorbed more grief than most people could catalog from memory,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: and America watched every minute of it. And this, you know,
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: curse may just be the word we reach for when
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: the facts stop feeling like coincidence, but never quite prove
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: anything more So, do I believe it's a curse. I
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: don't think so. I think you know every family has
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: its tragedies. Do I think there is one hundred percent
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: conspiracy behind some of the assassinations? Yeah, definitely, definitely. What
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: do you think though? Let me know down below, And
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: if you have any other topics you want me to
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: dive into, please let me know of the comments. I
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: always read the comments and they will see you beautiful
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: face in the next one. All right, Bye,