Bobby Kennedy Was Seen Holding Hands With Jackie on Vacation After JFK's Death & His Wife Allegedly Had This To Say About It

For decades, biographers, theorists and Kennedy family fanatics have alleged that Jackie Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy had an affair after the 1963 assassination of then-president John F. Kennedy. The friendship that formed between JFK’s younger brother and his heartbroken widow has often been misconstrued as something more and though we may never know the truth, a new book is at least sharing how the rumors played out behind closed doors in the Kennedy family’s many mansions.

Jackie: Public, Private, Secret by J. Randy Taraborrelli details a vacation Bobby and Jackie took alongside her sister, Lee, and Lee’s husband Stas Radzwill to a friend’s home in Antigua. One of JFK’s college friends, Charles Spaulding, was also present. He tells Taraborrelli that the trip was far from a happy, beachside getaway. He says: “We all felt like survivors of a disaster — namely Jack’s murder.”

“No one was in his right mind. Jackie and Bobby were remarkably close, reading Greek literature and taking long walks, holding hands, on the beach,” Spaulding says. According to the book, Bobby’s political ambitions were ramping up and he discussed plans to run for senate in New York. Jackie reportedly approved but begged him to never run for president.

While Bobby and Jackie were in Antigua, his wife Ethel Kennedy was in Vermont with their eight children while expecting their ninth. According to Taraborrelli, Bobby just wanted to be with Jackie as he found no comfort in his wife in the aftermath of his brother’s death. Thus, the affair rumors began.

Ethel allegedly found the rumors worrying. Taraborrelli writes that the two women had often struggled to get along and Ethel knew that if it wasn’t for the fact that their husbands were brothers, they might never have had anything to do with one another. Taraborrelli lists a number of incidents between the two women, including one in which Ethel called her sister-in-law “the same old selfish Jackie Kennedy.” However, the author does say even Ethel knew an affair between Bobby and Jackie was implausible.

Taraborrelli talked to Jackie’s younger brother, Jamie Auchincloss, who claimed Ethel was direct with Jackie about the rumors. “She said, ‘Look people are whispering about you and Bobby,'” Auchincloss, now 76, is quoted as saying. “Jackie was mortified and said she would never do something like that, and that was the end of it. Ethel believed her.”

Before you go, click here to see photos of all the many Jackie Kennedy has dated.