Kennedy Tragedies - Chronology

Chronology

Believers in the curse generally cite the following core events as evidence of the family's misfortunes:

• 1941 – Rosemary Kennedy was believed to have been mentally challenged. Some sources have claimed she was suffering from mental illness, such as depression and schizophrenia. Because of her increasingly violent and severe mood swings, her father, Joe, Sr., arranged in secret for her to undergo a lobotomy. The lobotomy instead further impaired her cognitive abilities, and as a result, Kennedy remained institutionalized until her death in 2005.
• August 12, 1944 – Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. died when his plane exploded over East Suffolk, England, as part of Project Anvil.
• May 13, 1948 – Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington died in a plane crash in France.
• August 23, 1956 – Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy gave birth to a stillborn daughter, Arabella. (Although the daughter was unnamed and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery next to her parents with a marker reading "Daughter", later reports indicated that the Kennedys had intended to name her Arabella.)
• August 9, 1963 – Patrick Bouvier Kennedy died two days after his premature birth.
• November 22, 1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Although Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the crime, he was shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later before a trial could take place. The FBI and the Warren Commission officially concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin. However, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that those investigations were seriously flawed and that Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy.
• June 19, 1964 – U.S. Senator Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy was involved in a plane crash in which one of his aides and the pilot were killed. He was pulled from the wreckage by fellow senator Birch E. Bayh II and spent weeks in a hospital recovering from a broken back, a punctured lung, broken ribs, and internal bleeding.
• June 5, 1968 – U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles immediately following his victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. Sirhan was convicted of Kennedy's murder and is serving a life sentence at the Pleasant Valley State Prison.
• July 18, 1969 – In the Chappaquiddick incident, Ted Kennedy accidentally drove his car off a bridge in Chappaquiddick Island, fatally trapping his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne inside. In his July 25 televised statement, Kennedy stated that on the night of the incident he wondered "whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys."
• August 13, 1973 – Joseph P. Kennedy II was the driver of a car which crashed. His passenger, Pam Kelley, was permanently paralyzed.
• November 17, 1973 - Ted Kennedy, Jr. has his right leg amputated because of bone cancer.
• October 30, 1975 - Michael Skakel murdered his neighbor, Martha Moxley with a golf club. Skakel was convicted and given a 20 year sentence after his 2002 trial.
• April 25, 1984 – David Kennedy died of a Demerol and cocaine overdose in a Palm Beach, Florida hotel room.
• April 1, 1991 – William Kennedy Smith was arrested and charged with the rape of a young woman at the Kennedy estate in Palm Beach, Florida. The subsequent trial attracted extensive media coverage. Smith was acquitted.
• December 31, 1997 – Michael Kennedy died in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado.
• July 16, 1999 – John F. Kennedy, Jr. died when the Piper Saratoga light aircraft he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard due to pilot error. His wife and sister-in-law were also killed.
• September 16, 2011 – Kara Kennedy Allen died of a heart attack while exercising in a Washington, D.C. health club.
• May 16, 2012 – Mary Richardson Kennedy hanged herself on the grounds of her home in Bedford, Westchester County, New York.