Epi 36: The Kennedy Curse

Are the Kennedy's cursed? - probably.  This family’s string of untimely deaths from assassinations, freak accidents, plane crashes, suicides and overdoses is just so crazy.  So.  Much.  Death.Here's just a quick run down of some of the major tragic events that happened to the Kennedy’s from 1941-2019:In 1941 Rosemary Kennedy had a lobotomy that went drastically wrong.  This left her unable to walk or speak well, and as a result, Rosemary remained institutionalized until her death in 2005.Joe Kennedy Jr. died in 1944 when he volunteered to pilot a secret World War II bombing mission in France. Two in-flight explosions hit the aircraft, killing him and another pilot. He was 29 years old.Only four years later, JFK’s sister Kathleen Kennedy died when a small plane crashed during a storm in France. She was only 28.In 1963, President Kennedy and wife Jacqueline gave birth to their third child, Patrick, nearly six weeks early. He survived for less than two days. Later that year, President JFK, 46 years old, was assassinated in Dallas.June 19, 1964 – Senator Ted Kennedy was involved in a plane crash in which one of his aides and the pilot were killed. Ted spent weeks in a hospital recovering from a broken back, a punctured lung, broken ribs, and internal bleeding.On June 5th 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot dead in Los Angeles in 1968, just as he was gaining Democratic support for his own presidential run.July 18, 1969 – In the Chappaquiddick incident, Ted Kennedy accidentally drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, which killed his 28-year-old passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne.In 1973, Edward M. Kennedy Jr., then aged 12, had to have his right leg surgically amputated due to bone cancer; he underwent a long, difficult, experimental two-year drug treatment to cure the cancerJFK’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Kennedy, and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette died in a plane crash in 1999. JFK Jr. was piloting the plane at night when he apparently lost his bearings — and the aircraft plummeted into the Atlantic.Meanwhile, one of Robert F. Kennedy’s sons, David Kennedy, died in 1984 of a drug overdose in a Florida hotel. He was 28.Another son of RFK, Michael Kennedy, died in a Colorado ski accident on New Year’s Eve 1997. He was 39.In 2011, Ted Kennedy’s daughter Kara Kennedy died at age 51 of a heart attack during a workout at a health club.Earlier this month, Saoirse Roisin Kennedy Hill, 22-year-old granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, was found dead of a suspected drug overdose at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Check out our website!Contact us!Support the show