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The Kennedy Curse: The Tragic Events Behind America's Most Famous Family · 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.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: The list goes on.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: And at some point, someone in the family said the
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: word out loud. Curse. And once it had a name,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: the country never let it go. But is it truly
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: a curse?
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Or is this.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Just what tragedy looks like when it happens to the
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: most watched family in America? This is the story and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: conspiracies of the Kennedys. Crime.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Conspiracy. Cults, serial killers, and murder, all.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Things that I love to consume, and I know you
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually minded freak! And
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: today we are talking about one of the most well-known conspiracy, curse,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: tragedy cases ever, and that's all the Kennedys. I've been
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: going down the rabbit hole of the Kennedys, and what
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I've found is pretty shocking, and I don't really know
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: what to make of it, but that's what we're getting
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: into today. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: go muck fine down the highway, slam all the brakes,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: and bust through this windshield into this Kennedy curse together.
• 1:41
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  Speaker 1: So the story starts with Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr., born
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  Speaker 1: in 1888 in East Boston to a family that was
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  Speaker 1: already climbing.
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  Speaker 2: And his father, P.J.
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  Speaker 1: Kennedy, was a Bay State politician and the grandson of
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  Speaker 1: an Irish immigrant during the famine years. And Joe graduated
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  Speaker 1: from Harvard in 1912 and became president of a small
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  Speaker 1: East Boston bank at 25. And he was a millionaire
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  Speaker 1: by the time he turned 30. and his appetite for
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: business touched everything he entered. He ran shipyard operations at
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  Speaker 1: Bethlehem Steel during the war, produced movies in Hollywood, and
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: built an extended portfolio in finance and real estate. And
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: by 1957, Fortune estimated his wealth somewhere between $ 200 and
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  Speaker 1: $ 400 million. And that landed him on a list of
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  Speaker 1: the 16 richest people in America. And before his children
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  Speaker 1: were old enough to understand money, he'd already set up
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  Speaker 1: million-dollar trust funds for each of them.
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  Speaker 2: Must be nice.
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  Speaker 1: So Washington came calling in 1934 when President Roosevelt tapped
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: him to lead the brand-new Securities and Exchange Commission as
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: its first chairman. And once in charge, he turned around
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: and outlawed the same Wall Street tricks he'd used to
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  Speaker 1: get rich himself.
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  Speaker 2: Classic.
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  Speaker 1: And in 1937, he became the first Irish American to
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  Speaker 1: serve as U.S.
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  Speaker 2: Ambassador to Great Britain.
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  Speaker 1: And Joe used the position to argue for peace with
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  Speaker 1: Nazi Germany and against American involvement overseas. And Roosevelt would
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  Speaker 1: cut ties with him over it. And by 1940.
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  Speaker 2: Joe was out.
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  Speaker 1: But Joe's real ambition had always centered on his children.
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  Speaker 1: So going back in time a bit, in 1914, he
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: married Rose Fitzgerald, the daughter of John F. Fitzgerald, the
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  Speaker 1: former mayor of Boston. And her father disapproved, but that
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: hadn't stopped them. And the two carried on a quiet
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: romance for seven years before the wedding. And Rose at
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  Speaker 1: this point had been immersed in politics since her younger years,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: filling in for her shy mother at official events by
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  Speaker 1: 16 years old and shaking hands with two presidents before
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  Speaker 1: she finished school. And she was devoutly Catholic, educated at
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  Speaker 1: Manhattanville College at the Sacred Heart. and would spend the
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  Speaker 1: next eight decades as the family's emotional and spiritual center.
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  Speaker 1: Until pneumonia took her in 1995 at the age of 104.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: And by then, the Kennedy family tree had grown to
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  Speaker 1: 28 grandchildren and 41 great-grandchildren. So between 1915 and 1932,
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  Speaker 1: Rose and Joe had nine children. And in birth order,
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  Speaker 1: they were Joseph Jr., John, JFK, also called Jack, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Robert, RFK,
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  Speaker 1: also called Bobby, Gene, and Edward, or Ted. In a
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  Speaker 1: 1931 family photograph taken at Hyannis Porte, shows all of
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  Speaker 1: them gathered together, with Rose pregnant with the youngest, Ted,
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  Speaker 1: because he wouldn't be born until the following year. So
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  Speaker 1: as we said in the intro, the Kennedy family household
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  Speaker 1: ran on competition, ambition, and high expectations. Joe pushed political
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  Speaker 1: debate at the dinner table and banned small talk entirely.
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  Speaker 2: Sounds riveting. Super fun.
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  Speaker 1: And reading the New York Times was a household expectation,
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  Speaker 1: even for the youngest. And outside, they raced sailboats, played
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  Speaker 1: brutal games of touch football, swung tennis rackets, and through
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  Speaker 1: punches and fights that blurred the line between playing and
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  Speaker 1: proving yourself. You know, good childhood fun. Yet despite all
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the rivalry, they were fiercely loyal to one another. Years later,
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  Speaker 1: Robert would write that his father, quote, called on the
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  Speaker 1: best that was in us. There was no such thing
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  Speaker 1: as half trying, unquote. And Joe had a specific design
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  Speaker 1: in mind for each of them. The boys were built
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  Speaker 1: for political careers and the girls were expected to marry
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  Speaker 1: powerful men who would be absorbed into the Kennedy orbit.
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  Speaker 2: If you will.
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  Speaker 1: And the eldest, Joe Jr., 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.
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  Speaker 1: And JFK even joked about his father's financial influence during
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  Speaker 1: the 1960 race. And the night before the election took place,
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  Speaker 1: he wanted to know exactly how many votes it would
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  Speaker 1: take to win, because he wasn't paying.
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  Speaker 2: Quote-unquote, for a landslide.
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  Speaker 1: But John would become the 35th president of the United States,
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  Speaker 1: and Robert N. Edward both won seats in the U.S. Senate.
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  Speaker 1: And Eunice Kennedy Shriver launched the Special Olympics. And Gene
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  Speaker 1: Kennedy Smith built an organization that brought people with intellectual
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  Speaker 1: disabilities into.
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  Speaker 2: The world of arts.
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  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
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  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.
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  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
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  Speaker 1: come from a journalist or a historian, but from a Kennedy.
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  Speaker 1: And on July 25th, 1969, Ted Kennedy sat before television
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  Speaker 1: cameras inside his father's home and addressed the nation about
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  Speaker 1: an incident on Chappaquiddick Island one week earlier. And Ted
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  Speaker 1: told the country he'd been hit by, quote, a jumble
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  Speaker 1: of emotions, grief, fear, doubt, exhaustion, panic, confusion, and shock, unquote.
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  Speaker 1: And somewhere in the chaos, he said one question kept surfacing, quote,
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  Speaker 1: whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys, unquote.
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  Speaker 1: And that was the first time anyone in the family
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  Speaker 1: had said the word out loud, on the record, to
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  Speaker 1: an audience of millions. But the feeling had surfaced before.
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  Speaker 1: And five years earlier, in 1964, Ted's small plane had
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  Speaker 1: crashed in a Massachusetts orchard, breaking his back and killing
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  Speaker 1: two people on board. And Bobby Kennedy reportedly said to
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  Speaker 1: an aide named Ed Guthman, quote, somebody up there doesn't
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  Speaker 1: like us, unquote. While Bobby's words were private, Ted's were
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  Speaker 1: broadcast to the entire country. and between the two, the
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  Speaker 1: idea of a Kennedy curse found its language in stock.
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  Speaker 1: Because the Kennedys were one of the most visible families
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  Speaker 1: in the world, spread across generations, drawn to risk, and
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  Speaker 1: constantly in public eye, So any family that large and
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  Speaker 1: that exposed, tracked by cameras and tabloids for over a century,
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  Speaker 1: will accumulate tragedy, naturally. And the question is whether what
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  Speaker 1: happened to the Kennedys is a pattern that demands an explanation,
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  Speaker 1: or just life at a scale most families never reach,
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  Speaker 1: amplified by fame until it looks like something more. So
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  Speaker 1: Rosemary Marie Kennedy was born on September 13th, 1918. the
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  Speaker 1: third child and first daughter to Joseph Patrick Kennedy and
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  Speaker 1: Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald. The obstetrician wasn't there yet when Rose
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  Speaker 1: went into labor, so a nurse physically held the baby
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  Speaker 1: inside the birth canal until he arrived. And this delay
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  Speaker 1: starved Rosemary of oxygen and the damage was permanent. So
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: every milestone took her longer than it had her brothers.
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  Speaker 1: Like crawling, walking, and just fine motor skills. And Rose
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: and Joe didn't grasp the full picture until the younger
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  Speaker 1: girls started passing her in developmental terms. And in an
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: era where intellectual disability carried deep stigma and almost no
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: support infrastructure, most families in their position would have sent
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: her to an institution, sadly. And Jo refused, though, saying
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  Speaker 1: the family could do better for her at home than
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  Speaker 1: any facility could, which is really nice.
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  Speaker 2: That's really good.
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  Speaker 1: And Rose described her daughter as, quote, an affectionate, warmly responsive,
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  Speaker 1: and loving girl, unquote, eager to earn the compliments she
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  Speaker 1: worked so hard to deserve. And Jo's ambassadorship brought the
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  Speaker 1: family to England, and Rosemary was placed in a Catholic
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  Speaker 1: school operated by nuns. And for the first time, she
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  Speaker 1: actually really thrived. And the nuns were preparing her to
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  Speaker 1: work as a teacher's aide, But the start of World
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  Speaker 1: War II ultimately brought the Kennedy family back to America,
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  Speaker 1: and everything Rosemary had gained in England kind of fell apart.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: So she was an adult now, and she wanted the
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  Speaker 1: same freedom her brothers and sisters had. And when she
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  Speaker 1: didn't get it, she pushed back, and she started sneaking
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: out at night. And in Eunice's words, quote, Rosemary was
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  Speaker 1: not making progress, but seemed instead to be going backward, unquote.
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  Speaker 1: So Joe and Rose were worried that she'd be taken
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  Speaker 1: advantage of or that her behavior could jeopardize the family's
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  Speaker 1: political ambitions. And that's when Joe heard about a prefrontal lobotomy.
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  Speaker 1: It was experimental and the American Medical Association hadn't endorsed it,
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  Speaker 1: but its pioneers assured him.
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  Speaker 2: It could help.
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  Speaker 1: And Rose knew nothing about it. And in November of 1941,
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  Speaker 1: Jo scheduled the lobotomy. And at this point, she was
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  Speaker 1: 23 years old.
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  Speaker 2: And the surgeons were Dr. Walter Freeman and Dr. James Watts.
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  Speaker 1: And if you don't know what a lobotomy is, essentially,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: they bored two openings into Rosemary's skull and fed small
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  Speaker 1: metal spatulas through to cut the connections between her prefrontal
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: cortex and the rest of her brain. And she was
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: conscious for all of it. carrying on conversations and reciting
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: poems while they cut. And her silence at the end
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: told them the cutting had gone far enough and the
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: surgery actually destroyed her. She could barely walk, could barely speak.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: So the person she had been was completely gone now.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: And she was moved to a private psychiatric facility near
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: New York City.
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  Speaker 2: Just devastating.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: And in 1949, they moved her to the St. Coletta
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  Speaker 1: School in Jefferson, Wisconsin, and she would never leave. And
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: the family told the public she was reclusive. Then later
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that she was mentally ill, which makes me ill, to
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: be honest, because it was their fault that she was
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: like this.
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  Speaker 2: And it took Joe Sr.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: Having a massive stroke in 1961 to change things. And
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: only after he was incapacitated did Rose finally visit Rosemary.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: And the rest of the siblings only then learned where
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Rosemary had been all those years because they didn't know,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: which is horrifying. Your sister just goes missing and you
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  Speaker 1: don't know why because your dad gave her a lobotomy
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: that she shouldn't have even gotten in the first place.
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  Speaker 2: 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 1987, when historian Doris Kearns
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Goodwin published the details in The Fitzgerald and the Kennedys.
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  Speaker 2: And the family had kept the secret for 46 years.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: And her sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, driven by what she'd witnessed,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: founded the Special Olympics in 1968, which....
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: Is wonderful.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: And JFK became the first president to propose and sign
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: major legislation for people with intellectual disabilities. And Ted carried
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: that mission forward in the Senate. And on January 7th, 2005,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Rosemary passed away from natural causes at 86 years old.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: And Jean, Eunice, Patricia, and Ted were all there at
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: the end. And she now rests buried beside her parents. Now,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Joe Jr. was the firstborn Kennedy and the one his
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: father had chosen for the White House. And in her memoir,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Rose said he had shown, quote, a certain forcefulness of
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: character that marked him as a natural leader, unquote, from
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the time he was young. And before the war, he'd
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: represented the family at the 1940 Democratic National Convention. And
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: a congressional campaign was supposed to come next. But he
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: enlisted in the Navy as a pilot in June 1941,
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: and he would hit 25 combat missions by May 1944
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: and actually qualified to go home. But he refused and
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: flew another 25.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Guy was a war hero.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: And Louis Papa, as a fellow pilot, recalled that Joe Jr.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: volunteered for every mission that carried, quote-unquote, extra hazard, earning, quote,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: everybody's unlimited admiration and respect, unquote. And then he signed
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: up for Operation Anvil. It was classified, and the target
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: was Nazi-fortified bunkers on French soil. And the plan was
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: to load a bomber with around 22,000 pounds of explosives.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: And two pilots would take it up, switch on autopilot,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: and jump out over England. And from there, a trailing
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: aircraft would fly the unmanned plane by remote control straight
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: into the target. The technology was fantastic. barely functional. That's
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: like the early 1940s at this point. And the program's
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: risks were enormous. And Joe Jr. wrote home telling his
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: parents he'd been doing, quote, something different for the next
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: three weeks, unquote, but assured them it wasn't dangerous. And
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: his father wrote back, advising him not to force his
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: luck too much. But on August 12th, 1944, Joe Jr.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: climbed into the cockpit alongside co-pilot Lieutenant Wilford Willey for
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: the Navy's first anvil mission. But they never made it
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: to the bailout point. At around 6.20 p.m., the aircraft
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: blew apart in two massive explosions. And one of the
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: pilots watching from the mothership called it, quote, the biggest
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: explosion I ever saw until the pictures of the atom bomb, unquote.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: And the bodies, naturally, were never recovered.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: And Joe Jr. was 29 years old.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: At the time. And both he and Willie received the
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Navy Cross posthumously. Though tall boys, a new generation of
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: British heavy bombs, could destroy those same targets, the drone
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: program failed to achieve a single successful strike. And when
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: the news reached home, JFK reportedly said, quote unquote, now
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: the burden falls on me. Kathleen Kick Kennedy was the
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: family's rebel, the one sibling who insisted on charting her
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: own course. And she was 18 when her father's ambassadorship
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: brought her to London, where she was crowned debutante of
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the year. And that's where she met William or Billy Cavendish,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Marquis of Harrington, and the two fell hard for each other.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: And he was Protestant and her mother was horrified because
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: they're Catholic. And he was also in the British Army.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: Now Rose fought it, but Kick went through with a
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: civil ceremony in May 1944 and married Billy anyway. And
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: Joe Jr. showed up for the wedding before his passing.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: And he was the only one in the family who did.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: And unfortunately, the marriage would only last four months because
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: a German sniper killed Billy on the Belgian front. And
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Joe Jr. had died less than a month earlier. And
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: in a letter, Kick told a friend, quote, unquote. And
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Kick went back to England carrying the title Lady Harrington.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: And eventually she would fall for Peter Fitzwilliam, another wealthy
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Protestant who was trying to get out of his marriage.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: And her parents severely disliked the idea and threatened to
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: cut her off entirely. But in May of 1948, Kick
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: and Fitzwilliam flew out to visit Joe in France. But
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: before they could make it, storms drove the aircraft into
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the mountains, killing everyone on board. And she was 28
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: years old. And just like the wedding, Joe Kennedy Sr.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: was the only family member at the funeral. Kathleen Cavendish
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Martianus of Harrington was laid to rest in a small
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: churchyard in Enzer, 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 JFK 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.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: And they buried two children.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Jackie's first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage in 1955. 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 Jr. Then on August 7th, 1963, Jackie
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: gave birth to Patrick Bouvier, Kennedy at Otis Air Force
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Base on Cape Cod roughly five weeks earlier, weighing four
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: pounds and ten and a half ounces. But within hours,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Patrick developed symptoms of Hyaline Membrane Disease, now called Respiratory
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Distress Syndrome, or RDS. And his lungs were too underdeveloped
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: to manufacture surfactant, the substance that stops a newborn's air
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: sacs from sealing shut. And at the time, the disease
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: was killing roughly 25,000 babies a year. And he was
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: rushed to the Children's Hospital in Boston and placed inside
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: a hyperbaric chamber. And he lived 39 hours. And many
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: say his death transformed neonatal medicine, giving rise to the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: modern NICU and driving new research funding from the National
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Institutes of Health. So millions of babies were able to
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: live in no small thanks to that research. And today,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: roughly 95% of infants diagnosed with RDS survive. So all
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: four of them, John, Jackie, Arabella, and Patrick... are buried
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: together now at Arlington National Cemetery. Now, John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: was born May 29th, 1917 in Brooklyn, Massachusetts, and he
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: became the 35th president of the United States on January 20th, 1961,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: serving 1,036 days before his death at the age of 46.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: And he was the first Catholic to hold the office
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: and was beloved during his time in the White House.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: And his family's influence ignited a whole generation's idealism, referenced
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: through journalist Theodore White's comparison to Arthur's Camelot. And he
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: championed the U.S. space program, navigated the Cuban Missile Crisis
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: without a nuclear exchange, and signed the Nuclear Test Ban
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Treaty and the Equal Pay Act. And though his presidency
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: only bore the weight of the Bay of Pigs invasion,
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: the standoff over Berlin and the early escalation in Vietnam,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: before politics, he'd been a Navy officer in the Pacific
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: during World War II. And a Japanese destroyer sank his
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: patrol torpedo boat in the Solomon Islands, and Kennedy led
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: his surviving crew to safety, earning the Navy and Marine
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: Corps Medal. And anchorman Walter Cronkite later reflected on the
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Kennedy era, saying, quote, Kennedy seemed to be leading us
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: into a new era of youthful exuberance over the fun
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: of life, the fun a country could have being itself
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: being important to the world. We were dancing on clouds, unquote.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And Bob Schieffer with CBS News called him, quote, unquote,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: saying America had, quote, sort of seen the presidency in
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: black and white up until that point, unquote. So on
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: November 21st, 1963, the president and the first lady flew
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: to Texas and met up with Vice President Lyndon B.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Johnson to motorcade through cities. And the trip doubled as
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: a political mission. And Texas Democrats were feuding and Kennedy
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: needed the state for re-election in 1964. 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 Love Field,
• 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: misting rain. And then the skies opened into a beautiful
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: blue morning. And with 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 Nellie 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
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: speech ran roughly 10 miles, and an estimated 200,000 people
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: packed both sides of it. The motorcade swung into downtown Dallas,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: and Nellie Connolly turned to Kennedy from the jump seat.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: Quote, well, Mr.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you, unquote. And
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: then at around 12.30 p.m., the limousine continued on Elm Street,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: heading toward the triple underpass. And that's when shots rang out.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: And a round hit the base of Kennedy's neck and
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: tore out through his throat. And the Warren report held
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: that the 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 2: And Dr.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Kenneth Salyer, on neurosurgery call, recalled a large jagged wound
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: on the right side of the president's skull with pieces missing.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: And Jackie was at the back of the room the
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: entire time with her dress still covered in blood. And
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: at 1 p.m., John F. Kennedy was declared dead. And
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Walter Cronkite broke the news, though the network didn't have
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: a live camera running. And the audience got nothing but
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: his voice laid over a static card on screen.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas,
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: And once the death was confirmed, Cronkite addressed the nation.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2 o'clock Eastern Standard Time,
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: some 38 minutes ago.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: And his producer, Sandy Socalo, 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 husband, and she rested on
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: his chest, removed a ring, and placed it on his finger. Now,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Vice President Lyndon Johnson had been riding three cars behind
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Kennedy in the motorcade, and he went back to Air
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Force One at Love Field, bringing the former president's body
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: with him in a bronze casket. Johnson would take the
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: presidential oath at 2.38 p.m., becoming the 36th President of
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: the United States. And Jackie stood beside him, still wearing
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: her pink suit still covered in her husband's blood. And
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: his first public statement as president was, quote, We have
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: I will do my best. That is all I can do.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: I ask for your help and God's, unquote. And Johnson
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: established November 25th as a day of national mourning. And
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: more than 800,000 mourners stowed along Pennsylvania Avenue as a
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: horse-drawn caisson bore Kennedy's flag-draped coffin from the Capitol Rotunda
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: to St.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Matthew's Catholic Cathedral.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: And alongside the procession walked a riderless horse named Black Jack,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: boots reversed in an empty saddle. a military tribute to
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: the fallen. And outside the cathedral, three-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr.
• 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
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Jackie lit the eternal flame that has burned at his
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: gravesite ever since. And by 2.15 that afternoon, before the
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: country had even absorbed what happened, Dallas police had already
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: arrested a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. Now, Oswald was
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: a new employee at the Texas School Book Depository, and
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: he had been charged with Kennedy's assassination and with the
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: fatal shooting of Dallas patrolman J.D. Tippett, who was killed
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: roughly 45 minutes after his president was hit. And Oswald
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: denied any involvement during police questioning, telling reporters, quote, I
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: didn't shoot anybody.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: No, sir. I'm just a patsy, unquote.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: And two days later, on Sunday morning, November 24th, police
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: were transferring Oswald to the county jail when a Dallas
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: nightclub owner named Jack Ruby shot Oswald point blank in
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: 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, 48 hours earlier, the president had died.
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: So with Oswald dead, there would be no trial, no
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: public cross-examination of the evidence, and no definitive resolution to
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: the questions surrounding November 22nd. And a jury convicted Ruby
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: of murder and gave him the death penalty, though an
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: appeals court later threw out the verdict. But still, he
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: died on January 3rd, 1967 from a blood clot complicated
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: by cancer before any retrial could begin. And a special
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: presidential commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren spent months
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: investigating the assassination. And its conclusion was that Oswald acted alone,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: firing every shot that killed the president. And the commission
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: saw nothing tying either him or Ruby to a larger plot.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: But most Americans never fully accepted the commission's conclusion. And
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: when FiveThirtyEight polled the public in 2017, just one in
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: three Americans said they believed Oswald acted alone.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: Not me.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I'm not one of those, and that's why this is
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: a conspiracy podcast. And an onlooker named Abraham Zapruder had
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: captured the assassination on film, and its frames raised questions
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: the official account struggled to answer. And the commission's account
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: held that three rounds left Oswald's rifle in 8.6 seconds.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: And one bullet supposedly passed through Kennedy and then struck
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Governor Connolly, as we know. The critics called it the
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: magic bullet theory, arguing a single round could not cause
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: that much damage and remain nearly intact. And others pointed
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: to a grassy knoll ahead and to the right of
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: the motorcade as the position of a second shooter. And
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: broader theories implicated the CIA, organized crime, and Cuban exiles.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: And in 1979, a House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: after a two-year investigation that a second gunman had probably
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: fired and that Kennedy was, quote unquote, probably assassinated as
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: a result of a conspiracy. And the committee also found
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: that the Soviet government, the Cuban government, the CIA, the FBI,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: and the Secret Service were not involved, though it could
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: not rule out individual members of organized crime or anti-Castro
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: groups acting independently. And the committee faulted the Warren Commission
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: for not digging deep enough into whether a conspiracy existed.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: And the files stayed partly sealed for decades, despite a
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: 1992 law requiring full release within 25 years. And President
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Biden delayed disclosure on three separate occasions. And on January 23, 2025,
• 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 Jr. And the National Archives released
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: more than 77,000 pages.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: On March 18, 2025.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: And historians noted the documents did not change the lone
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: gunman finding, though they shed new light on CIA covert
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: programs from the early 1960s, including the recruitment of agents
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: within Fidel Castro's government. And biographer Frederick Logval flagged one
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: hole the new documents still hadn't closed. Weeks before the assassination,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Oswald traveled to Mexico City and sat down with diplomats
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: from both Cuba and the Soviet Union. And when the
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: signing was finished, Trump passed the pen to an aide,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: quote unquote, give that to RFK Jr.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: And Robert F.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Kennedy Jr., the slain president's nephew, told NBC News he was, quote,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: very grateful to President Trump, unquote. So seven months after
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the events in Dallas, Ted Kennedy nearly died in a
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: plane crash. And on the evening of June 19th, 1964,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: the 32-year-old senator left Washington for the Massachusetts State Democratic Convention.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: where he'd be re-nominated by acclamation. And he had stayed
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: in the Capitol all day for the final vote on
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And it was dark
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: by the time he could fly out. And the twin-engine
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: aerial commander carried five people. Ted, Indiana Senator Birch Bayh,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: and his wife Marvella. And legislative aide Edward Moss and
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: pilot Edwin Zimney. And Fogg and Drizzle had closed in
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: by the time they neared Barnes Municipal Airport in Westfield, Massachusetts,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: just before 11 p.m. And the plane slammed into an
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: apple orchard just three miles short of the runway. And
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: Ted watched the altimeter plunge from 1,100 feet to 600.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: And he compared it to a toboggan ride along the treetops,
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: followed by a violent collision with a tree. And Zimney
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: and Moss both died overnight from their injuries. And Birch
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: and Marvella Bai walked away with minor injuries from their
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: seats at the back of the plane. And Ted broke
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: three vertebrae and two ribs and suffered a collapsed lung.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: And Birch Bayh actually pulled him from the wreckage. And
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Ted was hospitalized for five months after that, immobilized in
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: a frame that held his broken vertebrae in place. And
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Harvard professors came to his hospital room and lectured at
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: his bedside, and he tore through stacks of books between visits.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: And 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.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: So Robert Francis Kennedy, or RFK, had served as attorney
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: general in his brother's administration from 1961 to 1964 and
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: won a U.S. Senate seat from New York in 1965.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: But before politics, he'd enlisted in the Navy during World
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: War II, serving from 1944 to 1946. And Bobby declared
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: his run for the Democratic presidential nomination on March 16, 1968,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: standing in the Senate caucus room in Washington. And his brother, JFK,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: had stood in that same room eight years earlier to
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: launch his own White House bid. And Vietnam had defined
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: his candidacy. Because he campaigned to end the war while
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: openly admitting that he had helped extend it during his
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: years as JFK's top advisor. And fighting poverty and racial
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: inequality became the foundation of his platform. And he won
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: primaries in Indiana, Nebraska, South Dakota... and Washington, D.C. And
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: on the night of June 4th, 1968, Bobby won the
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: California primary, beating Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy 46% to 42%.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: And around midnight, he delivered a victory speech at the
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. And his wife, Ethel, was
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: next to him, three months pregnant with their 11th 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 12,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: 15 a.m., Bobby left the stage and was led through
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: a service door. And he leaned over the counter to
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: shake hands with a 17-year-old busboy named Juan Romero. And
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: just then, a man named Sirhan Sirhan, armed with a.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: 22 caliber revolver, rushed forward and opened fire. And three
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: bullets struck Bobby. One graced his forehead and another went
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: through his neck. And the third went through his right ear,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: killing him. And five bystanders were also wounded from this attack.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: And Sirhan was tackled at the scene. And Robert Kennedy
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: died at 1.44 a.m. on June 6, 1968, at the
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: age of 42. And his wife, Ethel, his sisters, Jean
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: and Patricia, and his sister-in-law, Jackie, were at his bedside.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: And a funeral mass was held two days later at St.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Patrick's Cathedral in New York. And Ted delivered the eulogy.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: Quote, unquote.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: And his casket rode a funeral train 225 miles from
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: Penn Station in Manhattan to Union Station in Washington, while
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: tens of thousands of mourners lined the tracks along the road.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: And Bobby was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, 50 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. Now,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Sirhan Sirhan had grown up in Pasadena, California, after his
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: family emigrated from Jerusalem in the 1950s. And the Six-Day
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: War in June 1967 stirred something within him, and he
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: focused his frustration on Kennedy after hearing the senator voice
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: support for Israel during the presidential race. And on the
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: eve of the assassination, he reportedly said, quote unquote, I
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: did it for my country. And it happened on the
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: one-year anniversary of the Six-Day War. And he was convicted
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: of murder on April 17, 1969, and sentenced to death.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: And 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
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: lawyer in 2011, William F. Pepper, filed an appeal for
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: a retrial using a second gunman theory and a brainwashing
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: plot to make Sirhan the fall guy. And 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. And
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: an audio analysis of the shooting detected 13 shots, though
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Sirhan's revolver held only eight rounds. And Paul Schrad, one
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: of the five bystanders wounded that night, had testified against
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: Sirhan at the original trial. And by 2016, he had
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: reversed his position, and he told the parole board that
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: he no longer believed Sirhan was the one who killed Kennedy,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: pointing to what he called clear evidence of a second gunman.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: So just more conspiracy. And whether the case should be
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: open is a question that has fractured the Kennedy family
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: down the middle.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: RFK Jr.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Went to see Sirhan 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 II and Kerry Kennedy, oppose it. Mary Jo
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Kopechny was 28 years old and had worked for the Kennedys.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: New Jersey born and raised, she campaigned for JFK as
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: a college student, spent time teaching at a Catholic mission
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: school in Alabama, and landed a position in Robert Kennedy's
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Senate office. And when Bobby launched his 1968 presidential bid,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: she was one of the people.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: Writing his speeches.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: And on the night of July 18, 1969, she was
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: on Chappaquiddick Island for a cookout that Ted Kennedy had
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: helped organize. And the guest list included Kennedy, five other men,
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: and six women from Bobby's campaign staff, a group known
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: as the Boiler Room Girls. At around 11.15 p.m., Kennedy
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: left the party with Kopechny. And Kennedy's account was that
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Kopechny wasn't feeling well, and the two of them left
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: to catch the ferry to Edgartown. Where? they were staying
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: at separate hotels. In the car, a black Oldsmobile left
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: the dyke bridge and flipped into Pouchapond, coming to rest
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: upside down in the tidal water. And Kennedy got out
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: of the submerged car, but Kopechny remained trapped inside. And
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: he said he dove repeatedly into what he described as
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: a strong and murky current, trying to reach her until
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: exhaustion forced him to stop. And he made his way
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: to the cottage and brought back two friends, Joseph Gargan
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: and Phil Markham. And they dove in after Kopechny too,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: but neither one could reach her. But at this point,
• 40:06
  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 ferry had stopped running for that night, so Kennedy
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: jumped in and swam the channel to Edgartown, making it
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: back to his hotel by about 2 a.m. And morning
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: came before Kennedy contacted police, finally reaching them at around
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: 10 a.m. on July 19th, more than 10 hours after
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: the crash. And by then, her body had already been found,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: and diver John Farrar found Kopechny still inside the vehicle,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: and she was positioned with her face against the footwell,
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: both hands clutching the rear of the front seat. And
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: it looked like she had been lifting her head into
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: a pocket of air near the floorboard, which meant she
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: likely survived for some time after the car sank. And
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: by the time Kennedy finally reported what happened, any chance
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: to test his blood alcohol level was gone. And without
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: that evidence, prosecutors couldn't build an involuntary manslaughter case, but
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: he entered a guilty plea for leaving the scene of
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: an accident. And Judge James Boyle gave him the lightest
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: punishment available, which was only two months in jail. And
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: then he suspended every day of it. And his license
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: was suspended for 16 months. And a grand jury convened
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: the following April and returned no further indictments. And Mary
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Jo Kopechny's mother, Gwen, later said, quote, this is the
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: big hurt, the nightmare we have to live with for
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: the rest of our lives, that Mary Jo was left
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: in the water for nine hours. She didn't belong there, unquote.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: And one week after the accident, on July 25th, Ted
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: addressed the nation, and he called his failure to report
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: the crash immediately indefensible, and he denied any romantic involvement
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: with Kopechny. And he asked aloud whether, quote, some awful
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys, unquote. And
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: the speech ended with a question to the people of Massachusetts.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Should he give up his Senate seat? But he never did.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: And before the accident, many supporters had expected him to
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: run for president in 1972. And Kennedy announced he would
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: sit out the race, and he passed on 1976 as well.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: And he finally entered the race in 1980 as the
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: early favorite, leading the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, two to one
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: in polls of Democratic voters. And his campaign believed the
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: bridge had faded from public memory, but it had not.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: And Carter defeated him for the nomination. And in the end,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: brain cancer would take Kennedy in 2009. And he had
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: spent every year since Chappaquiddick, and few legislators in the
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: country carried more respect. but the White House was never his. Now,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: until this point, the tragedies had primarily befallen on the
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: generations that built the family dynasty. Starting in the 1970s,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: the pattern shifted to their children.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Ted Kennedy Jr.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Was 12 years old and in seventh grade when he
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: noticed a lump below his knee. And he assumed it
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: was a bruise from football or something. But then the
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: diagnosis came, and it came back as bone cancer. And
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: at the time, survival rates for it were grim. And
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Ted Sr. brought oncologists to the family's Virginia home for
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: a meeting to weigh on how to treat his son.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: And the science of chemotherapy was still pretty primitive at
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: this point, and no one could guarantee that putting a
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: 12-year-old on an experimental regimen would help more than it hurt.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: So they chose amputation, and surgeons would take his right
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: leg above the knee. And after that came two years
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: of methotrexate, a drug designed to destroy cancer cells. 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 Bruinser, Celtics game, during those visits, the two
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: of them would go. And there are people who believe
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: the senator sat out the 1976 presidential race for one reason,
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: and that was to stay at his son's side until
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: the cancer was beaten.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: And Ted Jr.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Survived, and the cancer never came back. And by his
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: teenage years, he was competing with the U.S. handicapped ski
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: team and brought home several national medals. And he served
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: as an advocate pushing for the Americans with Disabilities Act,
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: which President George H.W. Bush signed into law in 1990.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: And he went on to practice healthcare law, win a
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Connecticut State Senate seat, and serve on the boards of organizations,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: including Special Olympics International. Now his story is a rare
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: hopeful note peeking through the timeline. And then there was
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: David Anthony Kennedy, who was Robert and Ethel's fourth child.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: And when he was little, his father pulled him out
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: of the water after he came close to drowning. And
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: the very next day, he sat in front of the
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: television and watched his father get shot to death in
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: a hotel kitchen. And he was around 12 years old.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: And unfortunately, he turned to drugs to quiet it. And
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: a 1973 car accident started him on painkillers and addiction
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: took hold. And rehab after rehab failed to break it.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: And in April of 1984, the family gathered in Palm
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Beach for Easter, and David was staying at the Brazilian
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Court Hotel, and the people around him could see he
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: was just falling apart. And his brother Douglas saw the
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: deterioration firsthand. And on April 19th, he saw David swallowing
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: what looked like sleeping pills. By the 22nd, David was
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: drinking through the day, visibly paranoid and jumpy, which Douglas
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: blamed on cocaine. And David stopped by his grandmother Rose's
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: villa by the ocean on April 23rd while she was
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: in declining health. And authorities suspected he walked out of
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: that visit with some of Rose's prescription medication. And on
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: April 25th, 1984... David was unfortunately found dead in his hotel.
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: Room at the age of 28.
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: And a woman named Marion Neiman joined David for dinner
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: two nights before he died, and she told police he
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: couldn't stop crying and was in obvious despair. And according
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: to Neiman, he put away about seven vodkas that night
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: and told her he'd already used cocaine earlier. And back
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: in his hotel room, he pulled out a plastic bag
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: of powder out and snorted it, saying the bellboy had
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: supplied it. And the cause of David's death, according to
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: the medical examiner, was combined as a overdose. Cocaine, Demerol,
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: and a sedative. And two hotel bellhops were later charged
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: with supplying him cocaine. And then there's Michael Kennedy, who
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: grew up as one of Bobby and Ethel's 11 kids.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: And he was 10 when his father was assassinated. And
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: by adulthood, he was running Citizen Energy Corporation, which provided
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: heating fuel to families who couldn't afford it. And he
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: had managed Ted Kennedy's 1994 Senate re-election bid. And on
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: New Year's Eve 1997, the family was on a vacation
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: in Aspen, Colorado. And they were playing football on the
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: ski slopes, tossing a snow-packed water bottle back and forth
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: while skiing, which was a tradition the ski patrol had
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: warned them about before. And Michael went out for a
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: pass on an immediate slope called Copper Bowl, and he
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: caught the bottle and slammed headfirst.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: Into a tree.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: And he had a camera in his hands the whole
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: time trying to capture the game while skiing. And at
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: this point, it was dusk, so the mountain was pretty dark,
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: and that meant icy surface, which is really dangerous when
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: you're going really fast down a mountain on skis. And
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: ski patrol reached him within four minutes, and he was
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: taken to Aspen Valley Hospital and pronounced dead from head
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: injuries at 5.50 p.m. at the age of 39. And
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: a witness named Corey Hay described it all, saying, quote,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: there was blood all over the snow. Several of the
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Kennedys were on their knees saying the Lord's Prayer, unquote.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: And then there was John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., who was
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: born on November 25th, 1960, less than three weeks after
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: his father won the presidency. And he was the first
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: infant to live in the White House since 1893. And
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: he was widely referred to as John John, a nickname
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: that started when a reporter misheard his father calling John
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: twice in a row. And the family never used it,
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: but the country did. And he was three days short
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: of his third birthday when his father was killed. And
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: his mother told him to salute the casket. And the
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: photograph of that moment became one of the most recognized
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: images of the 20th century. So the whole country watched
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: him grow up in its living room. And in 1988,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: People magazine named the 27-year-old now law student the sexiest
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: man alive. And tabloids tracked his every move, calling him
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: America's most eligible bachelor. And he graduated from NYU's law
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: school in 1989, failed the bar exam twice, then passed
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: on his third attempt. And as a Manhattan assistant district
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: attorney now, he tried six cases and won.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: Every single one.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: And in 1995, he launched George, a glossy political magazine
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: that covered Washington through a pop culture lens, with celebrities
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: posing as the founding fathers on its cover. And in 1996,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: he married Carolyn Bessette, a Calvin 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 Jr.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: was their crown prince. And on the evening of July 16th, 1999,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: John Jr. climbed into a single-engine Piper Saratoga at Airfield
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: in Fairfield, New Jersey, and his wife Carolyn, who was 33,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: and her sister Lauren Bessette, who was 34, were with him.
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: And the plane was to drop Lauren at Martha's Vineyard,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: then fly on the Hyannis Port for his cousin Rory's
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: wedding the next day. But they were late before they started,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: and traffic in Manhattan delayed all three of them, and
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: they didn't reach the airfield until around 8 p.m. And
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: the plane lifted off at 8.38 p.m., roughly 24 minutes
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: after sunset.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: And John Jr.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: Held a private pilot's license, but no instrument rating, meaning
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: he was certified to fly only when he could see
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: the horizon. And he'd logged about 310 total hours in
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: the air, but only around three of those were solo
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: time in this particular aircraft. And he was also still
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: recovering from a broken left ankle fractured in a hang
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: gliding accident that June. So the cast was off, but
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: the injury had forced flight instructors to step in twice
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: already to handle the rudder pedals and bring the plane
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: down during lessons. So why he thought this was a
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: good idea is beyond me. And one of his instructors
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: volunteered to come along for the flight, but John Jr.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: turned him down saying, quote, he wanted to do it alone.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: And the same instructor later admitted the combination of that
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: route at night, the haze, and John Jr. 's experience
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: level would have kept him from signing off on the flight.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: So about 34 miles from Martha's Vineyard, the plane began
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: descending from 5,500 feet. and thick haze hung over the water,
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: erasing any line between sky and ocean. And another pilot,
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: who covered that stretch of sky the same evening, described
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: looking towards Martha's Vineyard and seeing nothing, saying, quote, there
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: was nothing to see. There was no horizon and no light, unquote.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: And at approximately 9.38 p.m., the radar track turned erratic.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Sharp turns, sudden climbs, steep drops, and John Jr. 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 aviators call
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: a graveyard spiral. And by 9.41, the aircraft hit the
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Atlantic at a descent rate exceeding 4,700 feet per minute.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: And he had filed no flight plan, made no radio
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: contact the entire trip, and sent no distress call. And
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: there were no survivors. And by 10 p.m., the plane
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: had not reached Martha's Vineyard. And Lauren's friends called the
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: airport looking for answers. And a Kennedy family friend reached
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: the Coast Guard at 2.15 a.m. And the Air National Guard, N-O-A-A,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: And the Navy joined the effort with five states contributing resources.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: And wreckage began washing ashore on Martha's Vineyard the next day.
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: And on July 20th, searchers deployed a remote-operated vehicle and
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: found the wreckage on the ocean floor. Eight miles out
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: and 120 feet down. And divers recovered the bodies the
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: following afternoon on July 21st. And all three remained in
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: their seats, belts fastened. And autopsies confirmed they died on impact.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: And on July 22nd, a Navy destroyer returned the ashes
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: to the waters where the plane went down. And the
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: family held a short service and the ashes were scattered
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: at sea. And a memorial service was held in the
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Church of St. Thomas More in New York the next day.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: And Ted spoke saying, quote, And John was only 38
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: when he died, younger than his father had been in Dallas.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: And the National Transportation Safety Board released its findings a
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: year later. And the cause was spatial disorientation during a
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: descent over water at night, compounded by haze 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 125 degrees of
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: right bank and 30 degrees nose down, consistent with a
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: classic graveyard spiral. And obviously, conspiracy theories surfaced, as they
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: always do when a Kennedy dies. But the physical evidence
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: seems to leave no room for them in this case.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: So Kara Kennedy was a television producer and the eldest
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: of Ted Kennedy's three children. And doctors found lung cancer
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: in 2002 and said the tumor couldn't be removed. And
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: her father tracked down a surgeon at Brigham and Women's
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: Hospital in Boston, willing to operate. And the team cut
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: away part of her right lung and put her through
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: chemotherapy and radiation. And according to her mother, Joan Bennett Kennedy,
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: the cancer was behind her. And Kara swam, walked the beach,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: and lived without restrictions. Quote-unquote, she was very healthy, Joan
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: would tell the Associated Press, and go on to say, quote,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: that's why this is such a shock, unquote. But on
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: September 16, 2011, Kara collapsed during a workout at her Washington, D.C. gym.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: She was 51 years old, and her brother Patrick told
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: the press that the years of aggressive treatment had weakened
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: her heart, saying, quote, her heart gave out, unquote.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: End quote.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: She's with dad, unquote. And their father had died of
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: brain cancer two years earlier. So Saoirse Kennedy Hill was
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: 22 and a Boston College communications major and the granddaughter
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: of Robert F. Kennedy through his daughter, Courtney. And she
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: spent time in Mexico constructing schools for indigenous communities. And
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: her family said she was, quote unquote, moved by the
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: causes of human rights and women's empowerment. And in 2016,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: she published a piece in the Deerfield Academy School paper
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: laying out her years-long fight with depression, saying, quote, my
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: depression took root in the beginning of my middle school
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: years and will be with me for the rest of
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: my life, unquote. And she would continue to say, quote,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: although I was mostly a happy child, I suffered bouts
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: of deep sadness that felt like a heavy boulder on
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: my chest, unquote. So on the evening of July 31st, 2019,
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: Saoirse ate dinner at the family home in Hyannis Porte,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: with her 91-year-old grandmother, Ethel. And afterwards, she headed to Embargo,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: a nearby bar, and sang karaoke with friends. And later
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: that morning, she made it back to the compound, walked
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: down to the ocean for a sunrise swim, and finally
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: crawled into bed around 6.30 a.m. And when she still
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: hadn't gotten up by early afternoon, the family grew worried.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: And paramedics arrived around 2 p.m., and Saoirse lay unconscious
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: and unresponsive still in her bed. And she was pronounced
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: dead at Cape Cod Hospital at 3.14 p.m. And her
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: official cause of death was an accidental combination of methadone
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: diazepam and fluoxetine and alcohol. And the death kind of
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: echoed David's from the years prior. So Maeve Kennedy McKean
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: had built a career in public health and human rights law,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: running Georgetown University's Global Health Initiative as its executive director.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: And her mother was former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend,
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: making Maeve a granddaughter of Robert F.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: Kennedy.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: And during the early weeks of COVID in April of 2020,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: Maeve's family had moved into her mother's waterfront property in Shadyside, Maryland.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: where the kids could spread out more than their cramped
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: DC home. And on the afternoon of April 2nd, Maeve,
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: who was 40 years old, and her 8-year-old son Gideon
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: paddled a 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 15 to 20 miles per hour, with gusts hitting
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: 35 miles per hour, but trees and houses along the
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: shore shielded the backyard and kept conditions feeling calm. But
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: once they cleared the cove, the full wind hit, pushing
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: them into the water on Chesapeake Bay. And they capsized
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: roughly two and a half miles out in water that
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: measured 51 degrees. And crews searched for five days, scanning
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: the bay floor with underwater sonar. Divers pulled Maeve from
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: the water on April 6th. And two days later, on
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: April 8th, they located Gideon in roughly 25 feet of water,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: more than two miles south of his grandmother's property. And
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: in a public statement, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend said her daughter had, quote,
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: So this was just a tragic loss of two generations.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: In one accident. So Tatiana Schlossberg's parents were diplomat Carolyn
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: Kennedy and.
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: artist Edwin Scholesberg. And she was one of JFK's three grandchildren.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: And she graduated from Yale and Oxford, reported on science
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: for the New York Times, and wrote a book called
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: Inconspicuous Consumption about hidden environmental costs. And on May 25th, 2024,
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: she gave birth to her second child. But a routine
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: blood panel during delivery came back wrong, and her white
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: cell count was far too high, And doctors ordered additional testing.
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: And results showed acute myeloid leukemia marked by a rare
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: Inversion 3 mutation. And doctors admitted her to Columbia Presbyterian
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: Hospital for five weeks, then transferred her to chemotherapy at home.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: And her sister donated a stem cell transplant, and Tatiana
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: went into remission. But the cancer would unfortunately return. In
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: a New Yorker essay published November 22, 2025, she would write,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: my doctor told me that he could keep me alive
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: for a year, maybe. My first thought was that my kids,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: whose faces lived permanently on the internet, of my eyelids,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: wouldn't remember me, unquote. And in the same essay, she
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: called her cousin, Robert F.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: Kennedy Jr.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: quote, unquote, an embarrassment to me and the rest of
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: my family. And she described lying in her hospital bed,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: watching his cabinet confirmation go through, despite a resume with
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: no experience in medicine, public health, or government. And Tatiana
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: died on December 30th, 2025, at the age of 35.
• 59:34
  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 Moran, 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 extended family. Now,
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: of course, there's a rational explanation for all of this.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: Edward Kennedy Jr., who lost his leg to cancer at
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: 12 and watched his family absorb loss after loss, said, quote,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: The Kennedy family has had to endure these things in
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: a very open way, but our family is just like
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: every other family in America in many ways, unquote. And
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: his aunt Eunice dismissed the whole idea. And the real problem,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: she said, was the nonstop tabloid coverage and a family
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: that was never allowed to grieve in private.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: And J.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Randy Teraborale, who wrote The Kennedy Heirs, told People that
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: the family itself largely rejected the idea of a curse,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: noting that Ted's speech after Chappaquiddick was the lone exception.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: And author Les Williams went further, arguing the pattern traces
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: back to a single source.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Joe Kennedy Sr.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: And in The Kennedy Curse Shattered, he wrote that Joe, quote,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: raised his children to believe that they were better than
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: anyone else and that they had to win every time
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: and at any cost, unquote. And that his obsessive ambition, quote,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: would have disastrous consequences for the family over the years, unquote.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: And Patrick Kennedy framed it differently in his 2015 book,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: A Common Struggle, pointing to untreated mental illness and addiction
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: as the thread running through decades of loss, from Rosemary's
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: lobotomy to David's overdose. And it's not hard to see
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: the skeptic's view here. A sprawling, wealthy, competitive family that
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: flew private planes, held public office, and lived under constant
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: scrutiny for over a century was always going to accumulate
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: grief at a visible scale. Improbability alone can account for
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: every single one of these tragedies. But even the rational
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: mind can start to associate patterns. And not all of
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: the Kennedys fully dismissed the idea. Ted stood before those
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: cameras in 1969 and wondered aloud whether some awful curse
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: hung over his family. And after RFK's death, Jackie told
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: those around her, quote, if they're killing Kennedys, then my
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: children are targets. I want to get out of this country, unquote.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: And she married Onassis before the year was over. And
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: in November of 2025, Tatiana Schlossberg said, JFK's granddaughter wrote, quote, unquote.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: And five weeks later, she was gone. Three generations apart,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: and the language barely changed. And after her husband was killed,
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Jackie sat down with Life magazine, and she invoked the
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: musical 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 Camelot, unquote.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: And she wanted the country to remember what it had lost,
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: and the country obliged. and every tragedy that followed added
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: another verse to the same story. So whether you call
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: it a curse, a consequence, or just, you know, the
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: weight of living in the public eye for that long,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: the result is the same. One family just absorbed more
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: grief than most people can catalog from memory, and America
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: watched every minute of it. And this, you know, curse
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: may just be the word we reach for when the
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: facts stop feeling like coincidence, but never quite prove anything more.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: So do I believe it's a curse? I don't think so.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, every family has its tragedies. Do
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: I think there is 100% conspiracy behind some of the assassinations?
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, definitely. What do you think though? Let me
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: know down below.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: And if you have any other topics you want me
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: to dive into, please let me know in the comments.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: I always read the comments and I will see your
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: beautiful face in the next one. All right, bye.