A forthcoming new book by acclaimed author Christopher Andersen on the marriage of Jacqueline Kennedy, U.S. President John K. Kennedy’s widow, to Aristotle Onassis titled “The Good Son: JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved” reveals how Onassis reportedly cheated on Jackie O. during their marriage. The New York Daily News released excerpts from the book.
Mr. Anderson writes that there were many suitors for President Kennedy’s stunning widow in the years after his death. The two that stood above the rest were the slain President’s brother Robert (Bobby) Kennedy and the Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
According to the book, Onassis gloated after Bobby’s death. “She’s free of the Kennedys,” he told his friend Costa Gratsos. “The last link broke.” Days after Bobby Kennedy’s death, Onassis arrived at Hammersmith Farm with his daughter, Christina. Jackie’s columnist friend Aileen Mehle says he wooed Jackie with jewels and his vibrant and vigorous nature though she calls him “repulsive”.
Jackie tried to persuade friends and family that Onassis was suitable marriage material but failed. “They hate my Greek guts,” Onassis had told Gratsos. American author Doris Lilly was heckled, pushed, kicked and cursed for predicting that Jackie was about to marry the tycoon on “The Merv Griffin Show.”
During the first weeks after the 1968 wedding, Jackie was abandoned on Skorpios while her husband did business. Onassis continued his romance with Callas and together they called Jackie “the False Lady”. Onassis’s chauffeur Jacinto Rosa said that Maria was the only true love of Onassis’s life even though they never officially married.
Cracks showed in the marriage in February 1970 when five highly personal letters Jackie had written to Roswell Gilpatric, four while she was still married to Kennedy as well as a note she dashed off during her honeymoon with Onassis, fell into the hands of a Manhattan autograph dealer. Onassis retaliated by dining openly with Callas at Maxim’s in Paris.
24 hours later, Jackie retaliated by jetting off straight to Paris and insisted on sitting at Maxim’s at the same table that Onassis had shared with Callas.
The book describes how he went to great lengths to smear his wife’s name. He even set up Jackie to be photographed in the nude by the paparazzi to embarrass her.
Onassis was not above holding John’s mother up to ridicule, especially if it might teach her a lesson. Fed up with hearing Jackie complain about the press and no longer willing to finance her costly invasion-of-privacy lawsuits, Ari hatched a plan to embarrass Jackie to such an extent that there would be nothing more that the press could do to hurt her.
As an added benefit, it would deeply hurt the woman he continued to deride as “the Widow.”
In November 1972, ten photographers put on wetsuits and slipped into the waters off Skorpios. With detailed maps of the island, the dates, times, and places where Jackie was expected to be — all provided by Ari — they snapped scores of color photos of Jackie sunbathing and strolling around.
The full-frontal images caused a sensation when they ran in the Italian skin magazine Playmen and were then picked up by Larry Flynt’s Hustler. Solely on the basis of the nude Jackie O shots, Hustler went from sales of a few thousand copies to over two million — launching Flynt’s publishing empire overnight.”
