John F. Kennedy Jr. feared his own family would tell the world he was secretly gay if he refused to publicly support a cousin charged with rape.
The ‘outing’ threat – which was entirely baseless and has been described by sources as ‘blackmail’ – was allegedly issued by Senator Ted Kennedy to pressure his nephew into publicly supporting the family’s claims that William Kennedy Smith, then 31 and the son of Teddy and JFK’s sister Jean Kennedy Smith, was innocent of the charge.
Smith denied the allegation and was found not guilty by a jury that deliberated for just 77 minutes.
Smith, a Georgetown medical student known as Willie, had been explosively charged and put on trial in December 1991 for raping single mother Patricia Bowman.
The rape allegedly occurred on the grounds of the Kennedy family mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, during the long Easter holiday weekend in March 1991.
Smith had met Bowman, then 30, at a glitzy club named Au Bar, while barhopping with his hard-drinking, womanizing Uncle Teddy and Teddy’s son, Patrick, then a 23-year-old Rhode Island state representative.
Against the wishes of his protective mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and fearing a firestorm if the scandalously false accusation about his personal life was leaked to the media, JFK Jr., then an assistant district attorney in New York City ‘caved in’, sources said.
He made a brief showing at the trial in support of Smith – who, according to a sworn affidavit presented to Congress, JFK Jr. believed was guilty – and even posed in a widely disseminated photo with his cousin.
John F Kennedy Jr feared he would be falsely outed as being secretly gay if he refused a demand to publicly support a cousin charged with rape
JFK Jr., left, was allegedly blackmailed by his own uncle into attending the rape trial of his cousin William Kennedy Smith, right
The family’s reported threats were baseless, insiders say, as JFK Jr. was widely known for his romances with women including Sarah Jessica Parker and Madonna. He later married Calvin Klein executive Carolyn Bessette, right, in 1996
William’s alleged victim Patricia Bowman was a single mother who accused him of raping her at the family’s Palm Beach estate
As a close friend recalls: ‘John made a showing for Willie against his better judgment because he firmly suspected Willie was guilty of the crime.
‘John was definitely fearful of all the scurrilous media attention he’d receive if the fake news story about his personal life was leaked, and how it would embarrass both him and Jackie, who were very protective of each other.
‘I was stunned when he told me that it was his uncle Ted who threatened him.’
But JFK Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999, bit the bullet and appeared for Willie, according to the affidavit from his friend James Ridgway de Szigethy.
He showed up at the trial, beginning with the two days during the critical jury selection process. His presence received huge media coverage with John telling reporters his visit was not an attempt to influence the case.
There has never been any evidence that JFK Jr. – who, three years earlier, had been dubbed People magazine’s sexiest man alive – was anything but heterosexual.
He had dated Sarah Jessica Parker, Madonna, Daryl Hannah and model Julie Baker among others, before he married Calvin Klein executive Carolyn Bessette in 1996.
But because the strikingly handsome Kennedy often stripped off his shirt to reveal his buff body when playing touch football in Central Park or biking and rollerblading around Manhattan, rumors and gossip swirled about his sexual preference, which is why the threat against him was made, insiders noted.
At a private memorial service for John after he, Carolyn and her sister Lauren Bessette were killed when the plane John was piloting to Martha’s Vineyard from New Jersey crashed into the Atlantic, his uncle Ted gave the eulogy.
The threat was allegedly made by his uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy in a bid to add credibility to the family’s public support of his nephew due to the seriousness of the allegations. Although most of the Kennedy family attended Willie’s trial, JFK Jr.’s mother, Jackie Onassis, refused
William, also known as Willie, was seen returning to court alongside his mother Jean, who was famously close with former Kennedy matriarch Ethel, who once credited Jean with playing matchmaker between her and Robert F. Kennedy
In part, the senator said of his nephew: ‘He had amazing grace. He accepted who he was but cared more about what he could and should become.
‘He loved to travel across this city by subway, bicycle and Rollerblade. He lived as if he were unrecognizable – although he was known by everyone he encountered.
‘He was king of his domain.’
The sensational televised Willy Smith trial drew hundreds of journalists from around the world to Palm Beach because a prince of America’s so-called royal family was on trial.
Famous family members such as Jackie were expected to attend. But unlike her reluctant, pressured son facing a possible tabloid scandal, she emphatically refused to show.
Other prominent family members, such as Ethel Kennedy and two of her sons, Bobby Jr and Michael, were seen in the courtroom.
Ethel was especially fond of Willie because it was his mother, Jean, who had introduced her to her brother, Robert Kennedy, who she went on to marry and have 11 children with.
The ten-day trial, during which some 45 witnesses testified, was considered a circus.
The alleged rape took place at the Kennedy family’s Palm Beach mansion over Easter weekend in 1991, after Smith met 30-year-old Patricia Bowman at Au Bar while out barhopping with his uncle Ted Kennedy and cousin Patrick
During Willie’s trial, the Kennedy’s presented a united front to the swarms of journalists who flocked to Palm Beach for the ten-day trial. He was found not guilty by the jury after 77 minutes of deliberation
Willie married arts fundraising consultant Anne Henry in 2011 and has a doctor’s practice in Easton, Maryland
Critics likened the outcome of William’s case to the 1969 Chappaquiddick scandal when the family secretary, Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, lost her life in a car crash while traveling with Ted who escaped unscathed and fled the scene
The Kennedys were thrilled when Judge Mary Lupo ruled out sworn testimony by three women who claimed they had been sexually assaulted by Smith in the 1980s but had not reported the alleged attacks for fear of retribution from the Kennedy family.
In the end, the six jurors, having heard the testimony of Ted, Willie and others, returned a not guilty verdict, with four of them weeping openly.
Smith’s attorney, Roy Black, called the rape allegation ‘right out of a romance novel,’ and Smith testified that he and Bowman had consensual sex.
The prosecutor’s take was far different: ‘What you heard during the course of this trial was not an act of love, not an act of sex. It was an act of violence.’
Following the verdict, Smith declared, ‘I have an enormous debt to the system and to God, and I have terrific faith in both of them’ and as he left the courtroom, hundreds of people chanted, ‘Willie! Willie! Willie!’
Once again, there was general suspicion of a Kennedy family cover-up and the use of Kennedy power and influence to bring about a quick acquittal.
After the verdict, members of the family issued statements expressing relief while expressing sympathy for Bowman.
Many critics likened the Smith rape case outcome to the 1969 Chappaquiddick scandal, where Ted Kennedy faced only a two-month suspended sentence and a one-year driver’s license suspension after the body of 28-year-old Kennedy family secretary Mary Jo Kopechne was found in his black Oldsmobile submerged in a pond on Chappaquiddick Island, near Edgartown, Massachusetts.
Kennedy had escaped the car, leaving Kopechne to drown, and failed to report what happened for some ten hours.
Ted allegedly left Kopechne to drown and got away with only a two-month suspended sentence and a one-year driver’s license suspension
A couple of years after the Smith trial, de Szigethy gave an affidavit to Ohio Congressman James Traficant claiming that Kennedy had told him: ‘”They (the family) should have done something about Willie years ago when he first started doing this” – meaning get help for him when he first started raping women.’
Kennedy had made the revelation a couple of months after Smith was charged in the Palm Beach case, de Szigethy said in the affidavit.
The affidavit was made during Congress’s investigation into another trial JFK Jr. was prosecuting. De Szigethy said John had told him ‘he didn’t want to have anything to do with either’ that case or the Willie Smith trial.
In the affidavit, de Szigethy, who had voluntarily passed a polygraph examination, stated: ‘John told me that when the trial took place, he would have to put in an appearance in the courtroom.
‘He told me he did not want to do this, and his mother did not want him to, either. I suggested that he not do it since Willie was guilty, but he told me who was pressuring him and why.
‘He said just his presence in the courtroom would make an impression on the jury, which is how they’re using me.’
In a follow-up letter to Traficant, de Szigethy claimed that if Kennedy didn’t cooperate in making a public show of support for Smith, he faced the release of personal information about his private life – and he used the word ‘blackmail.’
But de Szigethy never identified the person he claimed Kennedy had told him was ‘forcing’ him to ‘prejudice the jury’, although he did say it wasn’t Ted.
Ted Kennedy died of a brain tumor in 2009 at the age of 77. Father-of-three William Kennedy Smith, now 64, has a doctor’s practice in Easton, Maryland. He founded the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group Physicians Against Land Mines.
CNN will premiere a new three-part documentary on John Kennedy Jr.’s life and death on Saturday.
Jerry Oppenheimer has written two best-selling books about the Kennedys, ‘The Other Mrs. Kennedy’, about the life of Ethel Skakel Kennedy and ‘RFK Jr.: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And The Dark Side of the Dream’.
