Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed

Martha Moxley was a happy, socially active 16-year-old who had many friends in Connecticut, where she lived. Michael and Tommy Skakel were not among her friends, though she knew them because they lived in the same neighborhood, Belle Haven. The Skakel boys were Bobby Kennedy’s nephews by marriage, so they enjoyed the same immunity and privilege as the rest of the Kennedy clan. Martha knew them from school and was in the same year as Michael. On Halloween night in 1975, Martha begged her mother to let her go out with friends. Since Belle Haven was a safe neighborhood, her mother agreed. Martha never came home that night. Her body was found in her own yard the next morning, brutally beaten; her pants and underwear were removed, a broken glass bottle was jammed inside her vagina, and a sharp piece of metal was shoved into her neck.

Investigators determined that she was beaten to death with a specific golf club, which was later found to have come from the Skakel house. Martha’s mother, Dorothy, in the process of looking for justice, realized that no one else in the community shared her horror. Other mothers openly encouraged her to drop her campaign to have the Skakel boys brought to justice. Undeterred, Dorothy reached out to any reporter who was willing to investigate and report but found few. The media complicity that protected the Kennedys was powerful.

However, Dominick Dunne, a crime reporter for Vanity Fair, obtained a psychological analysis of the Skakel brothers, which the Skakels’ legal representatives had commissioned to help understand and defend them better. The report was damning. It determined that Michael and Tommy were “both deeply disturbed young men” and confirmed that they had both lied to the police in their initial questioning (188). The report’s profile of the most likely killer matched Michael Skakel perfectly; however, it also claimed that Martha must have been having sex with Michael, Tommy, or both, which all who knew her categorically denied (and her recent diary entries corroborated). The Kennedy media machine seized on the idea that Martha had been playing with their hearts and seducing them, blaming her for her own vicious murder.

In 1998, Michael wrote a tell-all book in which he vigorously denied the accusations of murder and instead pointed fingers at the sexual immorality of his Kennedy cousins. In it, he said that he and Martha had no relationship and that she had always been polite and kind to him. He also admitted to leaving his home that night on his own, though he said nothing else about the murder. In 2002, he was convicted of the murder. However, Robert Jr., despite all evidence proving his cousins’ guilt, campaigned vigorously for his release. In 2018, the charges were vacated on a technicality, and Michael was released.

Marilyn Monroe filed for divorce from Arthur Miller the same day that John F. Kennedy was inaugurated in 1961. Though they saw little of each other, John promised Marilyn he would divorce Jackie and marry her instead, making her the new first lady.

For John’s 45th birthday, Marilyn sang “Happy Birthday” for him at Madison Square Garden in a now infamous skin-tight dress covered in rhinestones. The display was intended to shock and enthrall John and the public, and it succeeded. Callahan claims that at the time, Marilyn was involved with both John and his brother Bobby. After the performance, when their love was as public as it could be, John vanished from her life, triggering Marilyn’s long-standing fear of abandonment. In response, she allegedly grew closer to Bobby. The love of these famous men made Marilyn feel “so seen, so wanted, so gratified” (204). The book claims that she considered Bobby a better man than John, citing (to her psychiatrist and friends) Bobby’s interest in civil rights. However, she failed to see that, like John, Bobby would never leave his wife, Ethel, for her.

In 1962, John rekindled his romance with Marilyn. Though she happily agreed to a relationship, she suspected that the brothers were courting her in a kind of brotherly competition. Nevertheless, she was unable to resist the way they made her feel: Her history as a foster child in an abusive situation, experiencing abandonment and self-hatred throughout her life, made her uniquely vulnerable to their manipulation. She began to unravel, almost getting fired from a movie production and appearing inebriated at another of John’s birthday fundraisers. She begged all the people she knew in the Kennedy family’s circle for advice on how to get either of them to settle down with her. No one could help, and Marilyn’s substance use continued to rise.

On August 4, 1962, Bobby arrived unexpectedly at Marilyn’s home, yelling about a wiretap recording that she supposedly had of him and John. Though the FBI had bugged Marilyn’s home, she had had no knowledge of it. The argument reportedly became violent, and actor Peter Lawford (who was Bobby and John’s brother-in-law) arrived to convince her to give them the tapes. Nothing came of the argument, and later, on the phone, Marilyn told Peter to say goodbye to his wife, to the president, and to himself. The next morning, Marilyn’s housekeeper found her dead on her bed. Her death was officially ruled a massive drug overdose, but her friends and family all blamed the Kennedys. Her ex-husband Joe DiMaggio banned the Kennedy brothers and Peter from the funeral and contended that had Marilyn never met the Kennedys, she would not have died that night.

In 1968, Jackie Kennedy announced a second marriage to Aristotle Onassis, a fabulously wealthy Greek shipping magnate. Decades her senior, Aristotle was an unsavory character who abused sex workers and held deeply antisemitic views. The public reaction to this announcement was utter outrage. Many thought that Jackie had “sold herself on the global marketplace” by clearly marrying for money and repudiated her stellar reputation as a scion of American culture (212). However, Jackie experienced significant mental health problems after John’s 1963 assassination and then Bobby’s assassination earlier in 1968.

Callahan claims that after John’s death, Jackie and Bobby started a grief-stricken affair. Allegedly, both felt that the emotionally stunted Kennedy clan couldn’t handle their sorrow at the death of their beloved husband and brother, and they found refuge in each other. Losing her husband and then her lover in such a short time left Jackie in need of a major change. Marrying Aristotle would destroy the image of Jackie that was fondly revered worldwide, giving her the opportunity for an entirely new life. She would no longer be the “woman Jack Kennedy had humiliated” or a martyr (219). Surprisingly, Rose Kennedy supported the match. Although a traditional Catholic matriarch who disapproved of Aristotle for many reasons, she felt that Jackie deserved the chance to find happiness and transform herself and her life however she could.

Her marriage might have changed her reputation, but it only increased her notoriety. She spent large sums on luxury items and travel, and her status as a fashion and cultural icon became legendary. However, the marriage started as a business proposition and quickly soured into abuse. Aristotle saw her as a possession and didn’t hesitate to humiliate her to display his power. He told the paparazzi where and when to find her sunbathing in the nude and, just two weeks after their wedding, started to cheat on her with opera singer Maria Callas. He verbally abused Jackie openly in front of guests. In the face of the deteriorating marriage, Jackie saw a psychiatrist for the first time in 1971 and began to unpack her trauma, not just from the assassination but from her deeply unhappy marriage to a highly flawed man. She eventually realized that “she had a right to be angry. She had a right to refuse such abuse” (226).

Rose continued to extend a surprising amount of support. She told Jackie to embrace the nontraditional aspects of herself and use them as strengths. Jackie’s reevaluation of her marriage to Aristotle coincided with second-wave feminism in the US, where marriage and motherhood became increasingly optional and women were fighting for reproductive rights, equal pay, and their own bank accounts. During this time, Jackie began to think about what she could be without the influence of any man in her life.

The matriarch Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy believed from an early age that “a woman’s greatest accomplishment is to suffer well” (233), a lesson she passed down to her daughters and daughters-in-law. In 1914, she married Joseph Kennedy, a rich young banker. Both their fathers were active in Boston politics. The casual exclusion of Irish Catholics like themselves from social and political groups fueled Joe’s determination to have a son who would become the first Irish Catholic president of the US. They raised their children with “militaristic fervor,” weighing them every day; quizzing them on world events, geography, and economics; and teaching them to ski, sail, and swim. Joseph Jr., John, Rosemary, and Kick were raised together in this competitive environment, and Rose and Joseph were disturbed to see Rosemary falling behind. Kick stood up for Rosemary as well as her mother. Joseph Sr. openly engaged in affairs, inviting his extramarital partners over for dinner with the family and taking them on family sailboat rides. His sons learned casual misogyny from him, and even Kick’s outrage wasn’t enough to change their ways. Rose left Joseph for a short while, but her father eventually encouraged her to return to him for the children’s sake.

The tragic lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy occurred after Joseph Sr., the US ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1939, took her with him to England during Hitler’s rise (and the Nazis’ threatened occupation of England). Rosemary had cognitive disabilities, and Joseph didn’t seem to care that under Hitler’s forced sterilization plan, she would likely not survive.

However, her father choosing her to accompany him made Rosemary feel special. At home, because of her intellectual shortcomings, she faced Rose’s constant displeasure. She was friendly and even flirtatious with some men, which was a scandal for a Kennedy girl even though the Kennedy boys were openly sexual, not least Joseph Sr. Because of her behavior, her parents sent her away to a Montessori boarding school in England, where she flourished. Her father, on his frequent trips to England, visited her.

He cared little about her educational advancements or emotional well-being; instead, he constantly expressed concern about her weight. He forced her to go on a strict diet and take pills and injections to slim down, even as the Nazis threatened to invade. Some who were aware of Rosemary and Joe’s relationship saw “something sinister” in it and wondered if he was sexually abusing her. No concrete evidence of abuse ever surfaced, but his determination to keep moving her around while keeping her close to him and isolated from the rest of the family drew suspicion.

After her graduation, Rosemary began to struggle again. Her father heard of a revolutionary new procedure to help women who were “moody or sad or sexually promiscuous” (245); it was called a lobotomy. She received the lobotomy without understanding the implications of the procedure. She had her head shaved, and a surgical drill bored into either temple. Afterward, she had the intellectual capacity of a two-year-old. The failed procedure led to her functional erasure from the family until the deaths of both her mother and father.