The Kennedy Family: Deaths That Form a Hunt for Power

On 12 August 1944, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.’s aircraft exploded over the English Channel during a bombing mission. He was 29 and had been chosen by his father as the family’s political heir. Four years later, Kathleen Kennedy died in a plane crash in France. In 1963, John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas. In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles. In 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. crashed into the Atlantic with his wife and sister-in-law.

Five deaths stretch across 55 years, including two assassinations that changed the United States. Because they happened in aircraft, in war, in a motorcade, and during a presidential race, they are usually treated as separate accidents and crimes. Put side by side, they create another sequence: whenever the Kennedy family moved one of its members closer to national power, a fatal event appeared. The “Kennedy curse” became the memorable name for a story about a family being hunted.