Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed

by Maureen Callahan

No one at the time reported Ari’s sinister machinations, the rumors that he had his enemies, including Bobby Kennedy, killed. Jackie wouldn’t have heard that rumor, but she knew that Onassis and Bobby shared a vengeful streak. Onassis had been among those who knew about Marilyn Monroe’s house having been bugged shortly before her death. He was among those who suspected—as did his friend Rupert Allan, Monroe’s personal publicist—that her death had not been an accidental overdose nor a suicide. He thought the Kennedy brothers had something to do with it, and his hatred for Bobby was not tempered by Jack’s assassination. Years after Ari and Jackie died, an esteemed biographer who had worked with Ari reported that Onassis had paid a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization—which regularly extorted Onassis and other airlines in exchange for not hijacking their planes—to kill Bobby.