Kennedy Tragedies Timeline
2000s
1941
Rosemary Kennedy, who is mentally ill, is institutionalized following a failed lobotomy. She is the eldest Kennedy daughter of Joseph and Rose .
1944
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.
1948
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.
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1963
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.
1964
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy , the youngest Kennedy child, escapes death in a plane crash that claims an aide, Edward Moss.
1968
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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1969
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.
1973
Edward M. Kennedy , the senator's son, loses his right leg to cancer.
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.
1984
David A. Kennedy, son of Robert, dies of a drug overdose in a Palm Beach, Florida, hotel. He was 28.
Patrick Kennedy, the teenage son of Sen. Edward Kennedy, undergoes treatment for cocaine addiction.
1991
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.
1997
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.
1999
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.
2002
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.
2005
Rosemary Kennedy dies on January 7 in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, at age 86.
2008
Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy is diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor on May 20.
2009
Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy dies on August 25. His sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, died two weeks earlier, on August 11.
2011
Kara Kennedy, the daughter of Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy dies on September 16 of a heart attack. She was 51. Kennedy was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002.
2012
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.
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