JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS

A Shared Tragedy Evolves Into an Abiding Love

THE LOOK OF LOVE. In the wake of JFK’s assassination, the former First Lady and the Attorney General became lovers. Here, flanked with his wife Ethel on one side and with Jackie on the other, one wonders what expression Bobby is returning to Jackie from the threshold of her home in Georgetown.

Bobby Kennedy and Jackie, before the cameras roll at Hyannis Port on May 29, 1964, less than a year after his brother and her husband was assassinated in Dallas.

The program, discussing the late President’s spiritual legacy, and filled with tremulous sensitivity, was broadcast from the home of Joseph P. Kennedy.

It was the beginning of a love affair, and it was captured on film by a paparazzo. Just two weeks after Dallas, Jackie, along with Caroline and John-John, moved into the Georgetown home of Averell Harriman, using it as a temporary shelter. Bobby and Ethel came to call.

Only the night before, Jackie had wept for hours, unable to sleep. At Bobby’s parting glance, Jackie smiled demurely, a promise of more to come in their relationship. Newsman Ben Bradlee, a close friend, recalled, “Bobby was almost catatonic for several days. It was like he was glued to Jackie. If he left her for a moment, he became jittery, unable to focus on business.”

Family, family, family…The roots of Jackie’s allure went deep, as shown by the fascination of Bobby for his sister-in-law in this retro-photo from the early days of the JFK’s marriage. From left to right, Teddy, Jackie, JFK, and RFK.

Chuck Spalding added to the post-assassination memory bank. He accompanied Bobby and Jackie to a private hour of mourning alone with the President’s coffin the night before the burial. “They were actually conversing with his corpse, both of them…I mean, car rying on a long conversation. They later told me that they could actually hear Jack’s voice speaking to them. It was eerie. Both of them had become unglued.”

In one of the most famous pictures ever taken in Washington, Bobby Kennedy was on hand to comfort Jackie when she arrived at the airport with the coffin containing the body of her assassinated husband in 1963. She was still wearing her blood-stained pink Chanel suit, wanting to show the world what “they” had done to Jack.

In the days and weeks ahead, no brother-in-law in Washington political life ever stood by his sister-in-law with such devotion. Along the way, Bobby fell in love with Jackie.

A photograph of Jackie and Bobby walking hand in hand at the president’s funeral was flashed around the world.

“The family that fucks together stays together,” said Truman Capote mockingly, referring to the post-assassination affair that began between Bobby and Jackie. The author was kept abreast of the affair by his close friend, Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill.

Before Jackie in the early months of 1964, there had been Lee herself. As author Christopher Andersen claimed, “A decade before the assassination, Lee’s first husband, Michael Canfield, had listened in one room while his wife made love to Jack Kennedy in the next.

“Bobby was a father to Jack’s children, and a husband to his widow”

—Senator George Smathers

According to various biographers, Lee herself may have been among the first to get in on the family fun.

Andersen claimed that while Jackie was in the hospital giving birth to Caroline, JFK seduced Lee while her first husband, Michael Canfield, listened to the sounds from his position in the living room outside.

During the early months of 1964, Lee threw two parties for Bobby Kennedy in London. Guests present later claimed that she showed “more than a passing interest in the Attorney General.”

As Capote recalled, “Lee also wanted to sleep with Bobby, and Bobby, like all those Kennedy men, was not one to pass up the opportunity.”

By the winter of ’64, Jackie and Bobby had become lovers. As revealed in Secret Service files, he was her almost constant companion, either dining in New York at the Four Seasons, tongue kissing at a private club, L’Interdit, in Manhattan, or spending long nights either at the 950 Fifth Avenue apartment of Steven and Jean Kennedy Smith, or at her Fifth Avenue apartment.

Coates Redman, who worked for the Peace Corps in Washington and who was a friend of Ethel’s, claimed that “Bobby was always rather bedazzled by Jackie, but RFK never intervened to halt the endless humiliation inflicted on the First Lady by her goatish husband. I’d say I’m ninety-nine percent sure they had an affair. You used to go to dinner parties and talk to people who lived near where Jackie lived on N Street just after Jack died. Bobby was constantly there. All hours. And you could see how they had a mad, morbid attraction to each other because they were the two persons most wounded by the President’s death.”

In the wake of his brother’s death, Bobby began spending nearly every evening at Jackie’s Georgetown house at 3017 N. Street, which had become Washington’s number one tourist attraction. Apparently, they spent hours talking in front of her fireplace. Eventually, he started spending entire nights with Jackie, leaving Ethel alone with the children.

Jackie’s close friend, Nancy Dickerson, said, “After Dallas, no one would have believed that Saint Jackie and Saint Bobby were sleeping together, even though they made it obvious. It would have been considered sacrilege. But Jackie and Bobbie were definitely having an affair.”

Nancy overstated her conviction that no one would believe it. At the time, Jackie and Bobby were two of the most carefully watched people on earth. Dozens of people learned of their affair, but the press did not report on it. In those days, the press wasn’t even writing about the numerous affairs of JFK, including his involvement with the late Marilyn Monroe.

Peter Lawford, Bobby’s brother-in-law, was one of the first to break the news. He told his wife, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, that “With Jackie, Bobby is now filling in for Jack in all departments.”

When Jackie flew to New York, the hotel staff at the Carlyle reported that he shared Jackie’s suite. She even went with him when he called on Herbert Hoover in his suite at the Waldorf Towers. It was so obvious to the ex-president that they were in love that he wisely cautioned them that the nation would be shocked to learn of such a liaison.

“Jackie relied on Bobby for everything, and he adored her,” said his close friend Chuck Spalding. He was aware that the Kennedy brothers often passed women on to each other. Bobby had “taken over” the affair with Marilyn after the President had broken off the relationship. Even their father, Joseph Kennedy, passed women on to his sons—or vice versa. Marlene Dietrich was an example of such “an exchange.”

Capote claimed, “She and Bobby carried on like teenagers, even in public. I used to sit with them at Le Club in New York. They were holding hands, kissing, and dancing as close as two leaves stuck together in a storm. They were lovebirds in every respect. Bobby was crazy about Jackie. Jackie confided to me that Bobby was thinking of ditching Ethel and marrying her.”

Not just Capote, but more and more people kept coming upon Jackie with Bobby “sightings.” Bruck Balding, an investment counselor on Long Island, found his two famous guests locked in a passionate embrace when he entered his stables one morning.

On a Pepsi corporate jet, with a host of celebrities, Jackie and Bobby flew to Keene, New Hampshire, for a week of skiing. Ethel was not invited. “Bobby hovered over Jackie,” Sammy Davis, Jr. claimed. “It was like he owned her. I had a drink with them in their suite late one night. Jackie was dressed in a beautiful silk robe, but Bobby was walking around in his underwear.”

The affair continued after Jackie moved to New York into a luxurious apartment on Fifth Avenue. RFK’s driver, “Jim,” reported that he often dropped his boss off at the apartment at around ten o’clock every evening, picking him up the following morning.

The lovers flew to Palm Beach and the Kennedy compound for a holiday. Socialite Mary Harrington reported that from her third-floor window she could look out onto the Kennedy property. “One morning, I saw Jackie sunbathing on the grass,” she said. “She had on a black bikini bottom, but no top. Bobby emerged from the house in white swim trunks and knelt down beside her. He kissed her passionately and fondled her breast with one hand. With the other, he felt between her legs outside her bikini. Later, with a towel thrown around her bare breasts, Jackie disappeared inside the house with Bobby.”

Author Gore Vidal, who was distantly related to Jackie, saw the affair in a rather cynical light. “I suspect that the one person Jackie ever loved, if indeed she was capable of such an emotion, was Bobby Kennedy. As Lee [a reference to her sister, Lee Radziwill] had gone to bed with Jack, symmetry required her to do so with Bobby.”

“Bobby just didn’t seem to realize that screwing Jack’s widow wasn’t going to bring his brother back,” said Senator George Smathers. “There’s no way that Bobby was going to divorce Ethel.”

Russell Gilpatric, a future lover of Jackie’s said, “Bobby became the central core of Jackie’s life after Jack was killed. She had no brother to turn to. Bobby had her back and acted in loco parentis, including John-John and Caroline in his own family gatherings. Bobby attempted to fill in as father to Jackie’s now fatherless offspring. In short order, he was also performing another of Jack’s roles.”

In the wake of the assassination, Bobby became a surrogate father for John Jr. and Caroline. He played a significant role in their education and, as John Jr. grew older, talked to both children about serious issues such as civil rights.

Biographer Kitty Kelley wrote, “Bobby Kennedy spent more time with his sister-in-law and her children than his own, and Jackie leaned on him for everything. She even considered at one point asking him to adopt Caroline and John-John, feeling she could not raise them by herself. He gave as much as he could, offering her all his love, support, and protection.”

Taki Theodoracopulos, the heir to a Greek shipping fortune, became a right-wing journalist and columnist. Back when he called himself “a young, good-for-nothing playboy and professional athlete,” he lived with Peter Lawford for a while at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel in New York, but moved out, charging that Kennedy’s former brother-in-law was a drunk and a bully.

The exclusive bar at the hotel soon became a rendezvous for cozy tête-à-têtes between Jackie and Bobby. Since Taki was often in the bar, he later reported on their romantic liaisons. Lawford had told him that Jackie was sleeping with Bobby. “The press knows about Jack’s many affairs when he was in the White House, and they didn’t write about them, but Bobby’s got them fooled with his altar boy act. He’s no more an altar boy than I am.”

As Lee’s biographer, Diana DuBois, wrote: “Taki’s sightings of Jackie and Bobby’s tête-à-têtes were hardly isolated observations. In the months after Dallas, there were many such incidents of hand holding in public and kissing. But so unwilling was the public—and the press—to cock an ear to anything that would diminish the Camelot myth that no one ever wondered if Guinevere and Lancelot were sleeping together now that Arthur was dead.”

“Everybody on the inside knew of Bobby’s affair with Jackie.” said FDR Jr. “They carried on like a pair of lovesick teenagers. People used to see them at Le Club, their torsos stuck together as they danced the night away. I suspect Bobby would like to have dumped Ethel and married Jackie, but there was no way in hell that was going to happen. They were staunch Catholics.”

Jackie sent a letter to C. Douglas Dillon, Secretary of the Treasury, telling him that she did not need Secret Service protection during the graveyard shift [i.e., between 11pm and 7am]. “It is pointless for them to stand in the cold all night outside my apartment building on Fifth Avenue.”

Privately, Pierre Salinger, JFK’s former Press Secretary, suggested that was because Bobby could come and go during those hours without being identified on the Secret Service logbook.

Perhaps the most romantic moment for Jackie came on Easter weekend in 1964. Ethel took Caroline and John Jr. with her own children on a ski trip to Sun Valley in Idaho. Along with Lee and Stanislas Radziwill, Bobby and Jackie went to Antigua in the Caribbean for a vacation in the sun. With them on the trip was Chuck Spalding.

The Kennedy party were house guests of Paul and Bunny Mellon at the very exclusive Mill Reef Estate, overlooking Half Moon Bay. Jackie liked Antigua so much that Bunny even offered to build her a vacation home on the island.

[Rachel Mellon, the heiress to the Listerine fortune and a fabled horticulturalist, fine arts collector, and designer of the White House Rose Garden, was often the “beard” concealing Jackie’s affairs.

Ted Sorensen claimed that Bunny, as she was nicknamed, was the only friend who knew about all of Jackie’s affairs, and concealed them from the press.

For hideaways, Jackie often used Bunny’s homes in Manhattan, Washington, D.C., her apartment in Paris, or her various vacation retreats on Cape Cod, Antigua, or Nantucket, even her estate at Oak Spring, Virginia, near Upperville, where she entertained Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Jackie favored this retreat for secret trysts with her lovers because Bunny and her husband, Paul Mellon, raised horses here.

As journalist Robert D. McFadden wrote of Bunny Mellon after her death in 2014 at the age of 103, “Like many other fabulously wealthy people, Ms. Mellon lived largely out of the public eye, shielded by lawyers and public relations retainers, unlisted addresses and phone numbers, and retinues to shop and buy tickets.”

According to friends, Jackie used Bunny’s “barricade of gates against the public” to conceal certain aspects of her private life.

“Why can’t Jack be more discreet like Bobby?” Jackie had asked, according to William Walton, in 1962 when her husband was to some degree “flinging his affairs in my face.” In contrast, Bobby conducted his affairs “like a secret agent operating undercover.”

As their affair evolved, Ethel became the neglected wife of Hickory Hill.

McFadden claimed that Bunny was “fresh-faced, slender, ebullient, radiating confidence, and a dazzling figure in a swirling cotillion or at the taffrail of a steamer.

Jackie trusted her taste explicitly and valued her discretion. “Unlike the rest of us,” said Sorensen, “Jackie knew that Bunny wouldn’t be writing a tell-all.”]

Spalding later said, “Jackie and Bobby were like two school kids in love. They were very close, holding hands, taking long walks on the beach under a moonlit sky. They were always whispering secrets to each other. Bobby and Jackie had separate rooms, but he would slip into her room at night, leaving early in the morning before the household rose.”

On their own, Bobby and Jackie also visited Sun Valley, and also journeyed to Aspen, Colorado. They went on weekend trips to Vermont. One skier remembered them laughing and hugging each other as they tumbled into a snow-bank.

Later that night, in an après ski lounge, when there were just a handful of guests, most of whom were drunk, Bobby lay with his head in Jackie’s lap, as she combed his bangs with her fingers.

In the summer of 1966, Kenneth McKnight, a former administrator of the Commerce Department during JFK’s presidency, recalled keeping an appointment with RFK (then a New York Senator) at his office in Manhattan.

It was scheduled for 8pm, when the staff had gone. He walked down the corridor, where the door to RFK’s office was half open.

He heard voices inside and looked in. “Bobby was on the sofa and Jackie was on his lap, planting little kisses on his face and neck. She had her arms wrapped around his neck. Of course, when they saw me, it became all business. I knew Jackie. She introduced me to Bobby. I wanted a job with him. She quickly left.”

Sometimes, Jackie complained to William Walton and others that Bobby was too dependent on her, that he was draining her of her strength. “Everyone thinks he’s taking care of me, but in essence, I’m looking after him. He became a basket case after Jack was shot. I’m giving him a reason to go on living.”

In Manhattan, Bobby and Jackie were often spotted at such hotels as the Algonquin. On a summer day, they often appeared casually, she wearing a blouse and slacks, he in a polo shirt and khaki trousers.

On some occasions, she could be seen with her head on his shoulder, even kissing his neck, as he sipped a vodka and tonic.

Sometimes, in attempts to be discreet, they were seen entering Jean Kennedy Smith’s apartment when she and her family were out of town. One doorman remembered them entering at 2am, with Bobby departing the next morning at 10:30AM.

Capote later claimed he received almost daily updates on the Bobby/Jackie romance. He taped a series of interviews in 1976 for film producer Lester Perksy. He called the Bobby/Jackie liaison “the most normal relationship either one ever had. There was nothing morbid about it. It was the coming together of a man and a woman as a result of bereavement and her mental suffering at the hands of her late, lecherous husband. In retrospect, it seems hard to believe that it happened, but it did.”

British journalist Peter Evans claimed in his book, Nemesis, that both Eunice Shriver and Ethel were aware of Bobby’s affair with what Ethel called “the widder.”

“Ethel may have been naïve, but she wasn’t that naïve,” Evans maintained. “In fact, Ethel had reached the same conclusions as Capote about her marriage. Thanks to their children, her husband’s Catholicism, and his concern with the Kennedy legacy, she realized that their marriage was largely intact.”

Allegedly, Jackie reported the affair to her suitor, Aristotle Onassis. He later told his cohort, Johnny Meyer, “By going public with the details of the senator’s affair, I could bury the sucker. But I’d lose Jackie in the process. But can’t you just see those headlines?”

Edward Klein, author of Just Jackie, said, “There were many who thought that Jackie secretly wanted to replace Jack with Bobby. And it was true that if Bobby could have been divided in two, Jackie might have considered marrying the half that was devoted to her.”

When news of Bobby and Jackie first became public, Kennedy defenders wanted to sweep the scandal under the carpet or bury it forever in some deep closet. But FBI and Secret Service reports, released in 2007, more or less confirmed the affair. The Bobby/Jackie liaison was reportedly active between the years 1964 and 1968.

Amazingly, for years RFK had previously enjoyed a reputation somewhat akin to that of a choirboy. But from all reports, Bobby was as much of a sex addict as his brothers, only he was much more discreet and in general he preferred that his women be smarter than Jack or Teddy did. He once told aide David Powers, “Unlike Jack and Teddy, I don’t get off on bimbos.”

When Bobby began his affair with Jackie, he had previously enjoyed the beds of everyone from singer Rosemary Clooney to Princess Grace Kelly. He’d also seduced two of the same blonde bombshells that his brother had, notably Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield.

Author C. David Heymann alleged that Jackie’s affair with Onassis drove Bobby into the arms of actress Candice Bergen, whom he met in 1965 when she was nineteen. Both Shirley MacLaine and Catherine Deneuve recalled seeing Candice and Bobby together at a party in Paris. Their affair even made the society pages of Paris-Presse. Capote alleged that Ethel found out about her husband’s sexual tryst with Candice. “They weren’t being furtive, they were being rather obvious.”

With Ethel and the children left behind at Hickory Hill, RFK’s Virginia estate, Jackie and Bobby intensified their love affair during the latter part of 1964. “Bobby and his brother’s widow did little to hide their affection for each other,” wrote biographer Christopher Andersen. “They continued embracing, kissing, and holding hands.”

Classified Secret Service files revealed that the romantic pair were in each other’s company several times a week.

Clare Boothe Luce, a long-time friend of Joe Kennedy, Sr., later exclaimed, “Well, of course, everybody knew Jackie and Bobby were involved, if that’s the right word for it. At least everyone who knew them was aware of what was going on between them.”

Spalding was one of the most intimate members of Bobby’s entourage, and a compelling witness to the Jackie/Bobby affair. “Bobby’s love for Jackie helped restore her emotional health after that horrible assassination. I really believe that Bobby was happier from 1965 until early 1968 than he ever was in his life. He still loved Ethel and his kids, but he really wanted to marry Jackie, but didn’t dare. After all, he planned to run for president. I often went on vacations with Jackie and Bobby. I didn’t stand over their bed watching them make love, but I know they often went into a single bedroom at around eleven o’clock at night and didn’t emerge until noon of the next day.”

In the months ahead, communal sightings of Bobby and Jackie became frequent. Dozens of persons close to both of them reported evidence of their affair. These included socialite Audrey Zauderer (later Audrey de Rosario) who lived at ultra-exclusive Round Hill, a villa compound and resort in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She claimed they were having an affair—“absolutely!”

The family’s nanny, Maud Shaw, claimed that Jackie and Bobby had separate bedrooms, but they “kept dodging in and out of each other’s boudoir, making no secret of their dalliance.”

The German screenwriter, Bernard Hayworth, also on vacation at Round Hill, reported seeing Jackie and Bobby swimming and sunbathing at a secluded cove. “He began massaging her back and kissing her neck,” Hayworth claimed. To grant them their privacy, Hayworth turned and left before the action heated up.

Columnist Victor Lasky wrote: “If the Kennedy dynasty is restored, it will be Ethel Kennedy (with whom she has little affinity) and not Jackie who will occupy the center of the stage. There cannot be two First Ladies in the White House. Yet the fact that she is doomed to be discarded by her brother-in-law should he become president has not deterred Jackie from doing all she can to further Bobby’s political fortunes. And because they frequently holidayed together, often without Ethel, there have been rumors that something untoward was going on.”

The New York Times bestselling author, C. David Heymann, has almost made a career out of investigating the private lives of the Kennedys, publishing intimate biographies of Jackie, RFK, and even John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Caroline.

More than any other investigative reporter, he introduced the secret love affair between Jackie and Bobby to the world, even though it was an open secret in Washington in 1964.

The book, Bobby and Jackie, is loaded with revelations about their affair, and of Jackie’s attempts to learn as much as possible about what Bobby had been up to before their affair was launched.

Jackie even found out about the sex act between Bobby and Marilyn Monroe that had been secretly videotaped in the blonde bombshell’s bedroom.

J. Edgar Hoover had called Clark Clifford, former Counsel to the President during JFK’s administration, to his office to show him the film and discuss possible fallout from it. No one knew how many copies had been printed.

At a dinner party in New York hosted by Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, Jackie confronted Clifford for more details, but he denied any knowledge of the explosive film.

After Bobby and Jackie separated as a means of saving his political career, there were other reports that the Kennedy family’s youngest brother, Teddy Kennedy, also pursued Jackie, even though she was married at the time to Aristotle Onassis.

“It was no secret that Teddy also had the hots for Jackie,” Capote told Bill and Barbara (Babe) Paley at one of their dinner parties at Round Hill, Jamaica. The story was just too fascinating for the guests to keep to themselves. By the time they returned to the States, Washington and New York society was abuzz with the hushed-up whispers.

Whether it was true or not, Capote amplified his story, claiming that on one drunken night at his apartment, Jackie even rated the sexual performances of the three brothers. On her scale of 1 to 10, Bobby got a 9, Jack a 6, and Teddy a 3.

“With Teddy,” Jackie allegedly confided, “it was like going to bed with a college freshman. Bobby was the one with the power and the drive. He seduced a woman like he was going after Jimmy Hoffa.”

When Capote asked her to describe Jack’s performance, she refused. “Just go to any party in New York, Washington, or Hollywood and ask around. You’ll get your answer.”

When RFK decided to run for President in 1968, he told Jackie he had to end their love affair “because too many eyes would be watching.” She understood that the intensity of their love could not continue under these new circumstances. It had been dangerous enough before. “Our love will endure,” she told him.

He told her that if he did not win the presidency, “I will come back to you. In the meantime don’t run off with Onassis.” That was a warning she would not heed.

Other friends claim that it was actually Jackie who broke off their sexual involvement, although their close friendship would continue. Knowing how much he wanted to be President, Jackie told him it would be best for them not to see each other for a while as a means of protecting his political future. She urged him to return to Ethel and his brood.

Here, Ethel and Bobby Kennedy appear in public together after Bobby wins the Indiana Primary in 1968.

Peter Lawford claimed that Bobby came to him after the rejection. “He took it really bad. He cried all night and into the next day. I didn’t know he was capable of such tears, because he could be pretty stoic.”

The actor did not condemn the affair, and later said, “After Jack died, Jackie threatened suicide on more than one occasion, although she couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her children alone in the world. But she came close to killing herself. Her love affair with Bobby may have saved her life.”

Throughout Bobby’s race to the White House, Jackie was seized with nightmares that he might be assassinated. On that dreadful pre-dawn in June of 1968, she learned that lighting had indeed struck twice.

At 3:45AM, she received an urgent call from London, where it was already morning. The news of Bobby’s assassination was already being broadcast.

“Jackie!” Lee Radziwill said, urgently. “Bobby’s been shot. It just happened.”

There was a long silence on the phone, and then a blood-curdling scream. “No, it can’t have happened!” Jackie shouted into her receiver. “The only two men I’ve ever loved. Shot!”

Within minutes, Chuck Spalding was on the phone with an eyewitness account of the slaying of RFK within the kitchens at the Ambassador Hotel.

She demanded that she be flown to Los Angeles at once. En route, she kept repeating, “It can’t have happened. It can’t have happened.”

Spalding met her at the Los Angeles airport. Jackie demanded, “Give it to me straight. No bullshit.”

In the hospital room, Ethel sat by her husband’s side, whispering her love for him into his ear. Getting up when Jackie entered, she embraced her. “I’m so glad you’re here.” Then she very graciously surrendered the room so that Jackie could spend some time alone with her dying husband.

At 12:45AM on a Thursday morning on June 6, 1968, RFK’s doctors approached Jackie and Ethel to tell the widows the grim facts. “There is no brain activity,” Dr. Henry Cuneo said. “He’s only being kept alive by artificial means. There is no chance ever of recovery.”

Ethel ran screaming down the corridor. “I won’t do it! I won’t kill Bobby!”

With nerves of steel, Jackie confronted the doctor. Very calmly she told Dr. Cuneo, “I am speaking for the family. We want you to disconnect the respirator. I’ll sign the consent form.”

After the respirator was disconnected, she came into the room. She stood there as RFK breathed on his own for five minutes. Then he stopped. He was dead. It was 1:44AM. Within minutes, bulletins went out around the world.

At the White House, President Lyndon Johnson was awakened with the news. “I couldn’t stand the shit,” he said. “But send Air Force One to Los Angeles to bring the body back to New York.”

En route East, Teddy sat alone with the casket. Ethel and Jackie were seated next to each other up front, but really had nothing to say.

Once in New York, Jackie placed a call to her trusted friend, Roswell Gilpatric, the Under Secretary of Defense during JFK’s administration, “Oh, dear God, please tell me. This is just a bad dream. The dawn will come. I will wake up. Please, please tell me that. When will my nightmare end?”

The burden of yet another assassination—this time of Bobby—became almost too much for Jackie. After the funeral on June 8, 1968, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, Lady Bird Johnson encountered Jackie. “I found myself in front of her and called her name, putting out my hand. She looked at me as if from a great distance, as though I were an apparition. I murmured some words of sorrow and walked on. . . .”

After that funeral, Jackie’s anger turned to bitterness. As Heymann wrote, “If she had felt any doubt or obligation to consider the impact of her actions on the political prospects of the remaining Kennedys, they were resolved by the shots that ended Bobby’s life. Once again it did not matter who had pulled the trigger, or for what twisted reason.”