Kennedy family's heartbreaking history after Tatiana Schlossberg's cancer death, aged 35

The Kennedy family's heartbreaking history has been brought into sharp focus following the death of Tatiana Schlossberg. It emerged yesterday (December 30) that Tatiana, the granddaughter of former US President John F. Kennedy, also known as JFK, had passed away at the young age of 35.

A climate journalist by profession, Tatiana revealed in November that she had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer, and had been given just one year to live. Her announcement came in an essay for The New Yorker, in which she disclosed that she had acute myeloid leukaemia. In the piece, titled “A Battle With My Blood”, she also shared a devastating fear about her children, reports the BBC.

Tatiana, who shares two children, Edwin and Josephine, with her husband, George Moran, wrote: "My first thought was that my kids, whose faces live permanently on the inside of my eyelids, wouldn't remember me."

She went on to say: "For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry.

"Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family's life, and there's nothing I can do to stop it."

Tragedy has seemingly plagued the family for more than 80 years. Most people are aware of the circumstances surrounding the assassination of JFK in Dallas, Texas, in 1963, but other notable deaths have also marked the Kennedy family's history.

Indeed, there have been so many that rumours abound of a so-called "Kennedy Curse," a term referring to the numerous untimely deaths that have occurred within the political dynasty, ranging from plane crashes to overdoses. 

It all began in 1944, when Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the eldest son of Joseph Sr. and Rose Kennedy, died during a secret mission in the Second World War, his military aircraft having exploded.

Three years later, in 1948, Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, sister of Joseph P., also passed away in an aviation disaster. In 1963, tragedy struck JFK personally when his infant son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, died shortly after birth.

Five years later, in 1968, his brother Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Yet the catalogue of unusual deaths in the family does not end there.

In 1969, the late Ted Kennedy, brother to JFK and RFK, drove his car off a bridge in the Chappaquiddick incident, resulting in the death of a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne.

In 1984, David Anthony Kennedy, the son of Robert F. Kennedy, died of an overdose in a Florida hotel. And, in 1997, Michael L. Kennedy, another son of RFK, passed away in a skiing accident.

However, these names represent just a few of the roughly 15 deaths linked to the "Kennedy Curse." Speaking about the origins of the phrase, J. Randy Taraborrelli, author of The Kennedy Heirs, said it was Ted Kennedy who "came up with the concept."

He told People: "Generally, they did not believe in the curse. It was Ted Kennedy who came up with the concept of the curse after Chappaquiddick, during his public address, when he said he wondered if perhaps that explained the terrible things that had happened to the family, including the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.

"And after that, the Kennedy curse became this sort of wide-ranging explanation for a lot of things that were happening. But when things got rough for them, I think they slipped into wondering if maybe there really was some kind of curse."