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COULD there really such a thing as the Kennedy curse? The charismatic, photogenic and ambitious IrishAmerican family have been struck by a disproportionate amount of death, scandal and self-destruction, setting the template for troubled family dynasties everywhere. The assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963 was followed less than five years later by the slaying of his brother, Robert Kennedy, during his campaign to be chosen as the Democratic nominee for president.
During the same period, the youngest Kennedy brother, Ted, found himself caught up in two grisly near-misses.
Firstly, he barely escaped a plane crash that killed his pilot and left Ted recuperating for months afterwards.
Then, in 1969, questions were asked over the death of a female passenger of his car that crashed in murky circumstances in Chappaquiddick.
The Kennedy offspring have also had their share of tragedy. JFK jnr, his wife Carolyn and her sister all died in 1999 when the small plane JFK jnr was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean during bad weather conditions.
David Kennedy, who witnessed the assassination of his father Robert, died of a cocaine overdose in a Florida hotel room in 1984.
Finally, Michael Kennedy, another son of Robert Kennedy, died in a tragic skiing accident in 1997. Earlier that year he had been charged with the statutory rape of the babysitter of his children, with whom he had been having an affair; however the charges had been dropped at the time of his death.
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YOU ARE HERE: 11 November 2007 / tribune.ie / 2007 / 08 / 19
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