Just Jackie by Edward Klein (web based ebook reader txt) 📗

“The courtyard [of the chapel] was lined with hundreds of white lilies, their pots draped in red velvet,” the paper’s Steven V. Roberts reported from Skorpios. “On the terraced hillside behind the chapel, cherry trees blossomed pink. In the distance was anchored the Christina, Mr. Onassis’s 325-foot yacht. Its Liberian flag was at half-mast.”

On the yacht itself, John Vinocur, who was then a correspondent for the Associated Press, telephoned a dispatch from the dining room. He held the receiver close to his mouth, and relayed a piece of color about Jackie’s mother, Janet Auchincloss. Suddenly, he was interrupted by Janet herself.

“The Kennedy children’s grandmother is not having breakfast at ten-thirty in the morning,” she said firmly. “She ate hours ago.”

Thousands of words were filed that day from Skorpios, but one scene stood out from all the others and was etched in the world’s collective memory. It was the scene of Jackie, wearing a new black Valentino dress beneath a black, tightly cinched leather coat, walking beside a heavily sedated Christina, and offering her an arm for support.

“Oh God,” Christina moaned.

“Hang on,” said Jackie, who had some experience with funerals. “Take it easy now. It’ll soon be over.”

They stepped into a waiting limousine, and were joined by Jackie’s former brother-in-law, Senator Edward Kennedy. The chauffeur shut the rear door, then slipped behind the wheel and started the engine.

Although no reporters were present, the world was later treated to a blow-by-blow description of what transpired among the grieving passengers in the sealed compartment of the limousine. Teddy Kennedy—bloated, perhaps drunk, certainly insensitive to Christina’s feelings—leaned forward and began talking to her about money. The anonymous source for this story was the indefatigable Costa Gratsos.

“Now,” Teddy Kennedy said to Christina—or so Gratsos claimed—“it’s time to take care of Jackie.”

“Stop the car!” shouted Christina.

She struggled with the door until she finally managed to get it open. Then she fled to another car in the cortege, and sat with her aunts.

Later, Gratsos explained to reporters why Christina had been so “cool” to her stepmother during the funeral. It was because Senator Kennedy had attempted to discuss “financial matters,” he told them.

This story became part of the permanent lore of tabloid journalism. However, it was just as false as most of Gratsos’s stories were.

“It’s true that Teddy acted awkwardly,” said Stelio Papadimitriou, “but that did not occur until after the burial. During a Greek funeral, there is a ritual where you offer fish, which has the mystical meaning of resurrection in Christianity. When that was over, Teddy approached me, and took me aside. He said he would like to talk to me about money.

“It was not the time or place to make such a suggestion, but we agreed to meet as soon as possible. Christina heard about this conversation, and got mad. But all that came later, quite a bit later, when we began to work out the financial arrangements.”

THE RECKONING

In his will, Onassis established a German-style Stiftung, or foundation, in Lichtenstein in memory of his son. The foundation would award scholarships for Greeks to study abroad, grant prizes for cultural and humanitarian achievement, and help treat sick people. But the Stiftung differed from an American charitable foundation in that it also ran a business, one of the world’s most modern fleets of tankers and dry-cargo ships. Onassis had stipulated that all of his money—about $500 million at the time—go to the Stiftung, with half of it held in trust for Christina.

“But she objected to the financial arrangements in her father’s will,” Stelio Papadimitriou told the author of this book.

“She told me, ‘Stelio, I do not wish to be subject to the foundation. If you compel me, I will be forced to go to litigation.’

“So we reinterpreted the will. We divided the entire estate into two equal parts—so many ships, so much cash, shares, real estate, etcetera—and wrote it all down on two slips and labeled them Tart A‘ and Tart B.’ We went to a notary public in Zurich, and Christina agreed in writing that the two slips were of equal value, about $250 million apiece. We put the slips of paper into a small box, and Christina reached in and picked out Tart B.”

“She said, ‘Gentlemen, now I give it to you to manage for me. Not because my father wanted it that way, but because I wanted it to happen.’ ”

The final reckoning with Jackie proved to be a far more difficult task. On April 18, 1975, a month after Onassis died, The New York Times ran a story reporting that he had been planning to divorce Jackie, and had retained the attorney Roy Cohn to handle the American end of the proceedings. The fingerprints of Costa Gratsos were all over the story.

“Several friends of the Onassis family have said that Mrs. Onassis wants more money,” John Corry reported on the front page of the Times. “[Christina] is said to be bitterly hostile to Mrs. Onassis.”

Jackie went through the roof when she read the story.

“According to what I was told by very reliable sources on the Christina side,” Roy Cohn said, “Jackie was calling up Christina in Monte Carlo after the story had been printed, threatening that unless Christina put out a statement saying that everything had been all lovey-dovey and wonderful between her father and Jackie, she was going to make no end of trouble over the estate, and everything else.”

Four days later, the Times ran a wire-service story from Paris headlined: MISS ONASSIS DENIES HER FATHER PLANNED DIVORCE. But Christina’s statement only fueled speculation that things were not right between Jackie and the Greek side of the family.

Shortly thereafter, Christina flew to New York and confronted Jackie in a face-to-face meeting.

“How much money do you want in return for giving up all further claims to my father’s estate?” Christina asked.

When Jackie refused to be pinned down, Christina threatened her with the public humiliation of a lawsuit.

Jackie responded with a not-so-veiled threat of her own. She