Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed

by Maureen Callahan

They were careless people… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

After the accident, guess who was at fault? Not Ted but his victim, Mary Jo, for being a single woman in this married man’s car late at night. The Kennedys have a way of quashing anything or anyone—a book, a miniseries, an interview—that contradicts their golden image.

Many of these women are complicated; they, too, were attracted to money, fame, power—and that’s okay. We have made great strides in realizing that few girls and women ever make perfect victims.

her explosive temper keeping him unsure and on edge. She should have known that her power over him would be fleeting.

John was like Seinfeld’s Bubble Boy, so coddled and spoiled that he didn’t know what he sounded like to others. He could be prickly and impatient and something of a brat, really. John didn’t live in the real world and never had; he lived on Planet Kennedy, where he was king,

But John’s habit of being careless with his own things and those of others was his defining character trait. Responsibilities were for other people, not him. He rode around the city on his bicycle and never locked it up. He spent thousands of dollars replacing bike after bike.

there was little John wouldn’t dare, and he bullied almost everyone in his life to be as wild as he was.

John hadn’t been able to bring himself to even look at Christina’s foot, let alone hear about her pain. Telling other people to “suck it up” was his way of avoiding what made him uncomfortable.

Later, years after his death, Christina was still unable to remember how they ever survived. When they finally reached land, John tied up the boat like nothing had happened. Christina was shaking. “John,” she said. “We could have died.” “Yeah, Chief,” he said. “But what a way to go.”

John had given Christina valuable information that day: He had a death wish. It was strong, in his DNA. She didn’t know if he was even aware of it, and she couldn’t allow herself to fully admit it to herself.

He never really broke up with her. One of their last times together, on the Vineyard, John waxed rhapsodic about birds.

Actresses, for many reasons, did not meet with Jackie’s approval. Daryl Hannah, whom John was seeing while still with Christina, was a movie star. Nothing softened Jackie’s stance.

He was such a heedless driver, speeding and switching lanes and, when stuck in traffic, driving on sidewalks. No wonder his closest friends refused to get in the plane he was learning to pilot, assuming—rightly—that he would fly the way he drove.

“There’s an unwritten rule in Massachusetts,” John told her, “whereby members of my family can commit murder and mayhem”—after all, decades earlier his uncle Ted had left a young woman to die in three feet of water—“and nobody bats an eye.” That heartless remark was a huge red flag. Carolyn ignored it.

She had this in common with John, a sense that the rules didn’t apply to her. She was special, and she knew it. The way to get John was to make him think she was the prize, not him.

That last one made her queasy. And lo and behold, the next day, that co-worker’s boyfriend called her. “Your friend Carolyn,” he said, “is really fucked up.” Carolyn had made a move. Her friend hadn’t been surprised so much as hurt, and though she never said a thing to Carolyn—well, karma could be a bitch. No ticket for her.

John Kennedy Jr. was Carolyn’s white whale, but snagging him long-term seemed unlikely. Everyone in their circle had watched Carolyn treat so many boyfriends terribly. It was emotional abuse that sometimes turned physical.

July 16, 1999. John’s cousin Rory was getting married in Hyannis and John expected his wife to go, even though he had recently moved out of their loft, been photographed with an ex-girlfriend, had yelled at Carolyn to Get the fuck out of my life! from his office phone at George, where everyone on staff could hear.

Jackie wasn’t naïve. She knew Jack wouldn’t be faithful. But she hadn’t known just how promiscuous he was or how little he’d do to protect her. Later she’d learn, along with the whole world in news reports too numerous to bear, that Jack had likely infected her with his own constant sexually transmitted diseases, the asymptomatic chlamydia among them, and this was quite likely why she’d had so much trouble carrying her first two pregnancies to term.

Everyone in DC knew the truth. Jack’s womanizing had always been off-limits with the press—but how much longer would they abide by that gentleman’s agreement? If a fraction of Jack’s sex life made the papers, it wouldn’t be Jack left humiliated.

Jackie had caught Jack getting a blow job in his Senate office, a young girl under his desk, just after they were married. He didn’t even try to hide his affairs.

Two priests came in to deliver last rites. They were both in shock, both struggling to maintain their composure, as was Doc Burkely. Jackie prayed with them, her voice stronger now. “Let perpetual light shine upon him,” she said. The priests left. Alone with her husband, or so she thought, Jackie kissed his naked body everywhere: His mouth, his chest, his leg, his penis. For all of Jack’s women, she was the last to possess him.

For all their growing knowledge of Jack’s faults, neither Mimi nor Diana knew that he could be a real sadist. Humiliation and sex went hand in hand for him. He was at his best during the chase, but once he seduced you, he seemed to think less of you.

They shared a high emotional intelligence and their own streak of danger. It was never a good idea to be around either Mary or Carolyn when one of them was angry; their explosive rages, often coming out of nowhere, could be terrifying. There were times when Mary hit Bobby hard, punched him in the face. She pushed him down the stairs once. But he’d always come back to her.

Yet Mary’s siblings were infuriated by Bobby’s talkativeness. There was no reason to defile her in death. There was no reason to give that sealed affidavit to a journalist if not to save Bobby’s reputation at the cost of Mary’s.

Gwen and Joe Kopechne didn’t know that Mary Jo waited, in agony, for help that never came—and why wouldn’t first responders be on the scene? Who would leave a young woman to die that way? Ted Kennedy would.

At the inquest, John Farrar, the diver who recovered Mary Jo’s body the next afternoon, testified that Mary Jo had not drowned but had suffocated to death. He said she had been alive for at least an hour in the water, maybe longer. That didn’t matter to Ted. He was sticking to his story.

Gwen began self-medicating with Valium. Her father, who kept all his anguish bottled up, eventually developed stomach cancer. They spent their lives tending to Mary Jo’s grave and her memory while fielding calls from Ted Kennedy every few years, asking them to quietly support his latest election bid. As ever, Ted would hold out the empty promise that someday, one day, he would tell them the truth.

She gave him an ultimatum, and she meant it: No more contact with Marilyn Monroe. Otherwise she would divorce him and take the children and cost him reelection, and the American people would finally know why. Jack complied, immediately. And Jackie, once again, felt her power.

Jackie looked at White and shook her head back and forth. It was her version or nothing. And so her first draft of history won out, the very last line, the kicker, written in her own back-slanted cursive: “For one brief shining moment there was Camelot.” That fairy tale would captivate America for decades to come—at the cost of many more women. What, in hindsight, had she wrought?