Jackie Kennedy Made JFK Jr. Promise Never To Do This One Thing That Could Have Saved His Life

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John F. Kennedy Jr. allegedly broke a promise he made to his mom, Jackie Kennedy, and it lead to his tragic death. The youngest child of Jackie and former president John F. Kennedy died on July 16, 1999 in a plane crash that also killed his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette.

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A biography claimed that, on her deathbed, Jackie tried to prevent her son from flying a plane due to the Kennedy’s unfortunate history with plane crashes. According to Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger’s biography The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters: The Tragic and Glamorous Lives of Jackie and Lee, Jackie “made John swear that he would not pursue his pilot’s license.”

The concerned mother, who died in 1994, allegedly told Ted Kennedy and her then-partner Maurice Tempelsman to hold her son to his promise. Soon after the alleged promise, Jackie lost her battle to non-hodgkin lymphoma.

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The Kennedy family suffered many tragedies involving plane crashes beginning in 1944 when the former president’s older brother, Joseph Kennedy, died in an airplane explosion while serving as a pilot in World War II. In 1964, Ted Kennedy broke his back in an plane crash that killed the pilot and a campaign aide. While Jackie was married to her late husband, Aristotle Onassis, his son died in a plane crash.

Evidently, John Jr. did not uphold the alleged promise. He was flying his wife and sister-in-law to Rory Kennedy’s wedding when the plane plunged into the Atlantic, according to People. Investigators concluded that Kennedy became disoriented while flying through thick fog over the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. The three bodies were recovered from the ocean days later, still strapped into their seats.

Before you go, click here to see photos of JFK and Jackie O.’s grown-up grandkids. 

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