One day at the end of April, Patrick, Kara, and Teddy found themselves in the conference room of a law firm in Boston meeting with one of the Kennedy family’s attorneys. “It’s a rite of passage,” Kara was saying. “The young ones take care of the old ones, the same old ones who once took care of the young ones. So now we have to take care of Mom the way she took care of us.” Kara looked well; it had been two years since her surgery, chemo, and radiation. Her hair had grown back, she was working out regularly at a gym, and had resumed her life. There was seldom a day when she wasn’t filled with gratitude; she refused to accept anything other than joy in her life, not after all she’d been through. She was totally devoted to her children, Grace, eleven, and Max, nine. Two months prior, she had turned forty-five.
“We need to help Mom, whatever we can do,” Patrick agreed.
By this time, Patrick was thirty-seven. He had a doughy, round face and a haircut that was pretty much in the same style he’d had since he was ten—a shock of brown hair with bangs, short on the sides and long on the top. Like most of his relatives, he had that great Kennedy smile. He was good-looking, but in his own haphazard sort of way. Unlike many of his male cousins, he didn’t care whether he appealed to the opposite sex. In his mind, he had important work to do in Congress and he was devoted to it. He always believed that when the right woman came along, he’d know it.
Teddy, now forty-three, actually looked more like what people thought the Kennedys were supposed to look like than did Patrick. He was squared-jawed like his father and always meticulously groomed and decked out in a finely tailored suit. He seemed more like a politician than his brother, who actually was a politician. “How in the world did we get here,” Teddy asked, according to the attorney’s memory, “with some guy we don’t even know having so much power over Mom? We can’t let this happen. We need to find this guy and we need to stop him.”
Indeed, someone had been nosing around in Joan’s affairs. Her children didn’t know who he was or what he was after, only that his name was Webster Janssen and that he was sending letters to them and their lawyer announcing that he and Joan had reached an agreement. Under his advisement, she was selling property she owned, and he was going to be in charge of everything. He was going to be in charge? Someone they didn’t even know? No. That wasn’t going to happen.
AFTER THAT TERRIBLE night Joan Kennedy was found on a Boston street in the rain, her children proposed an informal family contract to her under the advice of a therapist. It outlined her problems and stipulated that if she continued to drink alcohol, they’d be authorized to take over her financial affairs with Teddy as her temporary guardian.
Joan had, at this point, at least $9 million in holdings, including her condo in Boston and summer home on Squaw Island. Begrudgingly, she signed the deal, if only to show good faith with her children. She then went into a rehab treatment in Florida for a month. As soon as she got out and returned to Boston, she relapsed. The children then decided to obtain a statement from her doctor saying she was incapable of caring for her personal and financial affairs. They intended to enforce the informal contract; they wanted Joan placed under the restrictions of court-ordered care, with them responsible for her affairs, Teddy the overseer. This was a heartbreaking turn of events, but a necessary one. Kara, Teddy, and Patrick were torn between their desire to help their mother and their concern that she would never forgive them. A judge signed off on it.
Into the middle of this family quandary came Webster Janssen. As lawyers and accountants sifted through Joan’s holdings while doing her taxes, they were thunderstruck to discover that prior to Teddy being named her guardian, she’d transferred the title of one of her homes into a trust that was controlled by Janssen. He was, apparently, encouraging Joan to sell the family’s waterfront home on Squaw Island. (Even though Squaw Island was a five-minute walk along the beach to the other homes owned by the Kennedys—0.9 miles, to be exact—it was still considered part of the Kennedy compound.)
When Joan’s children confronted her to ask what was going on and who was Janssen, they were told in no uncertain terms to mind their own business. Yes, she had been working with Janssen, she said, and yes, she planned to make the sale, and her mind was made up about it. The siblings then asked their father about Janssen. He said he vaguely recalled the name but couldn’t quite remember from where. It was strange, he agreed, a real mystery.
What the Kennedys didn’t realize at that time was that Webster Janssen was actually Joan’s second cousin. His mother, Belle, and Joan’s mother, Virginia, were cousins. It was Ethel who figured it all out once people in the family began asking around about him. She went into one of her dozens of scrapbooks and came to the conclusion that he’d been an usher at Ted and Joan’s wedding back in 1958.
As it happened, Janssen, a trust investment officer at Citibank and Morgan Guaranty Trust, was not only a relative but a confidant of Joan’s. According to what he would later recall, she had kept him from the family on purpose. “Why do they have to know everything?” she asked, according to Janssen. “She felt her privacy was constantly being invaded by Kennedys of every generation, and she wanted to compartmentalize some aspects of her life,” he said. “I was one of those aspects. She was a woman trying desperately not to lose control.”
As Janssen recalled it, he and Joan had been driving from her home to Boston to visit relatives in Maine when she told him she was worried about her finances. She said that all the stints she’d had in expensive rehabilitation centers had depleted her bank accounts. Because he was experienced in such matters, Janssen later reviewed Joan’s portfolio and felt he could assist her. “She was in over her head,” he recalled, “and it was a real mess. She’s a nice person, and people were taking advantage of her,” he said. “I didn’t like what I saw. And then this family contract? Not even legal? Just written out and signed by Joan under duress, giving her kids control? No. She needed money; she had bills, mostly rehab bills not covered by insurance. She was worried.”
When he asked how much time Joan spent at her home on the compound, she told him that it was no more than two months out of the year. “The New Wife is there,” she said, referring to Vicki; she often also referred to herself as “the Old Wife.” She said that while she got along with “the New Wife,” “Ethel and Eunice and the rest of those old biddies are there, too, and I’m sick of being judged by them. Even my own housekeeper judges me.”
“Really?” Janssen asked.
“Yes,” Joan said, “you should see the way that woman looks at me.”
“Fire her, then.”
“I want to,” Joan said, “but then I’d have to deal with my busybody kids about it, and God forbid I should make a decision of my own.”
Webster suggested that Joan put the house on the market, saying he believed she could get about $7 million for it, which would be a sizable nest egg. He also told her that she needed to inform Ted and her children that he was advising her. Joan agreed to tell Ted about Janssen, but not the children. “She later told me that Ted approved of me and was just glad to have someone looking out for her,” Janssen said. “I came to later understand, though, that this wasn’t true. She hadn’t told anyone.”
In the opinion of Joan’s children, there was no reason to sell the house, which had been in the family for decades. It was part of their cherished history; all three siblings had spent much of their youth there with their cousins and had many happy memories. “It’s a piece of all of us,” Kara said of the house. Joan had money in the bank, they said. She just needed to cash in some annuities; they’d figure it all out for her. Whatever happened, though, one thing was sure: they were not going to let her sell that house.