Timeline of Kennedy Tragedies

1940s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

1941 1944

Rosemary Kennedy, who is mentally ill, is institutionalized following a failed lobotomy. She is the eldest Kennedy daughter of Joseph and Rose. Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., the oldest Kennedy son, dies in a plane crash over the English Channel during World War II. The pilot was 29 at the time of his death. Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish dies in a plane crash in France at age 28. Her husband, William John Robert Cavendish, the Marquess of Hartington, died in World War II.

1948

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Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, the second son of President Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, dies on August 7, two days after he was born almost six weeks premature. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated on Nov. 22 in Dallas. He was 46.

1963

1964 1968

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the youngest Kennedy child, escapes death in a plane crash that claims an aide, Edward Moss. Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated on June 5 in Los Angeles. The 42 year old had just won California's Democratic presidential primary election.

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Edward M. Kennedy, drives off a bridge on his way home from a party on Massachusetts' Chappaquiddick Island. Mary Jo Kopechne, an aide who was in the car with him, dies in the accident. Edward M. Kennedy, the senator's son, loses his right leg to cancer.

1969

1973

Joseph P. Kennedy 2d, the son of Robert and Ethel, is the driver in a car accident on Cape Cod that leaves one passenger permanently paralyzed. David A. Kennedy, son of Robert, dies of a drug overdose in a Palm Beach, Florida, hotel. He was 28.

1984 1986 1991 1997 1999

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Patrick Kennedy, the teenage son of Sen. Edward Kennedy, undergoes treatment for cocaine addiction. William Kennedy Smith, the son of Jean Kennedy Smith, is accused of raping a woman at the family's Palm Beach, Florida, vacation home. He is tried and acquitted. Michael Kennedy, the son of Robert, dies in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado. He was 39. Prior to the accident, Michael made headlines for allegedly having a long-term affair with his children's babysitter. John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, die when their plane crashes in the waters off Martha's Vineyard, Ma. Kennedy was flying the Piper Saratoga plane that plunged into the Atlantic Ocean. Michael Skakel, nephew of Ethel Kennedy, was found guilty in June by a Connecticut jury of the 1975 murder of Martha Moxley. Skakel was 15 when Moxley, also 15, was found bludgeoned to death outside her Greenwich, Conn., home. Skakel was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison in August.

2002

2005 2008 2009 2012

Rosemary Kennedy dies on January 7 in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, at age 86. Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor on May 20. Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy dies on August 25. His sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, died two weeks earlier, on August 11. Mary Richardson Kennedy, the 52-year-old estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is found dead in the barn of her Bedford, N.Y., home. She died of an apparent suicide.