Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story?
Airdate
:
7/9/2009
Were Jacqueline Kennedy and her brother-in-law Bobby Kennedy having a steamy affair?
That's the shocking claim in a new book, Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story, by Kennedy biographer C. David Heymann. He says the pair was thrown together by their shared grief after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Bobby held Jackie's hand during the funeral, comforting her in her darkest hour.
"I do believe that Bobby and Jackie were in love. I mean it was Bobby, as Jackie said, who was always there for you," says Heymann.
Heymann says the affair lasted four years and was an open secret in the family; he even claims Bobby's wife Ethel knew about it.
"There is in fact a photograph that speaks volumes in the book, of Jackie peering out [from behind a door] at Bobby with this very sexy, lascivious smile on her face and Bobby is looking back over his shoulder at her, and Ethel has a scowl on her face," Heymann says.
"To a lot of people it's sacrilege to say that Jackie had an affair with her slain husband's brother. Why write this now?" asks INSIDE EDITION's Les Trent.
"The relationship between Jack and Jackie Kennedy has been idealized into something that it isn't. A wonderful marriage, a beautiful young couple that was more Hollywood than Washington. It wasn't that at all. It was a womanizing man that couldn't settle down with his wife, and a very angry woman who became very scornful of her marriage and as a result became involved with his younger brother. I think it's an important revisionist view of this entire period," Heymann says.
Heymann says the romance lasted until Bobby was assassinated in 1968. Jackie died of cancer in 1994, and her son John Kennedy Jr. followed a few years later, dying in a plane crash in 1999. Now, on the 10th anniversary of his death, People magazine is publishing rare personal photos of JFK Jr. One shows John nursing a broken ankle after a paragliding accident the same year he died, and another shows his wife Carolyn Bessette showing her maternal side on the beach with a friend's child.
"These photos show a really intimate look, a very personal look, at John; you sort of see him here in a way you've never seen him before," says People's Liz McNeil of the photos.
