Editor’s note: Mari Rodríguez Ichaso has been a contributor to Vanidades magazine for several decades. She is a specialist in fashion, travel, gastronomy, art, architecture and entertainment, a film producer and a style columnist for CNN en Español. The opinions expressed in this column are solely his own. Read more opinion pieces at cnne.com/opinion
(CNN Spanish) — The unexpected recent death of Lisa Marie Presley —at 54 years old— reminds us that there are many famous and millionaire families, like the Kennedys, the Onassis, the Grimaldi and now the Presleys, who seem to have horrible karma, and to be like “ cursed families”, persecuted and predestined by tragedies.
And in some cases, like that of the Kennedys, there is open talk about the Kennedy curse or “the curse of the Kennedys”, about which much has been written and commented, which also “splashes” those who associate with them.
Drugs, alcohol, suicides, tragic accidents, terrible infidelities and even murders haunt them. And the Kennedy tragedies – beyond the political assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, at 46, and his brother Robert F. Kennedy, at 42, and the horrifying scandal of Senator Edward Kennedy and the death of drowning of her young friend, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechbe, in the Chappaquiddick crash – include the deaths of many of its younger members, such as the plane crash that claimed the life of John F. Kennedy Jr., of 38, his wife Carolyn Bessette, 33, and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette, as the late president’s son piloted a small plane through bad weather. As did David (28) and Michael (39), two of Robert F. Kennedy’s sons, who died of drug overdoses and a skiing accident, respectively.
All this and much more in the tragic lives of the Kennedys, without forgetting the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, President Kennedy’s widow, one of the most glamorous and famous in recent history.
In some of these families, such as the Onassis, its members have practically disappeared little by little. And many attributed the fact that by marrying Jacqueline Kennedy, the famous Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis had brought “the Kennedy curse” to his family.
First, his 24-year-old son Alexander died in a clumsy plane crash. Then the owner got sick. Ari died in 1975, aged 69, of myasthenia gravis, leaving Jackie a multimillionaire widow and her ex-lover, the great opera singer Maria Callas, lying to die of sadness. Callas died in Paris, at the age of 53, of a heart attack just two years after hers, her adored Ari. And as if these tragedies were few, in 1988 she died mysteriously in a bathtub in Buenos Aires, of a cardiac arrest that produced pulmonary edema, her daughter Christina Onassis, at the age of 37. In a few years the famous and billionaire Onassis ceased to exist!
And Athina Roussel, the owner’s only granddaughter, Christina’s daughter and heiress to his enormous fortune – after a sad childhood, she seemed to have found happiness in love and her marriage to the Brazilian rider Álvaro “Doda” de Miranda Neto – has ended divorced and devastated at 37, after 12 years of what she believed was a happy marriage, due to the highly rumored, and eventually proven, infidelities of her beloved husband. Another sad part of this story!
The Grimaldis, the royal family of Monaco, have gone through two horrible accidents: the death of Princess Grace, in 1982, at the age of 52, in a car accident in the mountains near the principality (in which she was with her daughter the Princess Estefanía, who was seriously injured). And a few years later, in 1990, the death in an accident on a racing boat of Stephano Casiraghi, 30, husband and father of Princess Caroline of Monaco’s 3 young children.
Tragedies that join multiple failed marriages between the Grimaldi, the heartfelt death of the reigning prince Rainier and countless scandals of all kinds (including several illegitimate children and terrible infidelities), which even dot the current Prince Albert II and his controversial wife Charlene.
This brings us to the Presleys and the unexpected death of Lisa Marie, Elvis Presley’s only heir, ex-drug addict (like her father), who always said she had not recovered from the suicide –2 years ago– of her beloved son Benjamin, with only 20 years old, who suffered from deep depressions and mental problems.
And now this new tragedy—of sudden cardiac arrest—has been a huge media coup and horrible for his family. Her mother Priscilla is devastated because she was very close to Lisa Marie, who as we remember was married 4 times (including her famous marriage to Michael Jackson!). And to the 3 girls who have lost their mother, her eldest daughter Riley Keough, 33, and twins Harper and Harper and Finley, 14.
We could go on exploring the many famous families that have always seemed to attract great tragedies…! Many… And it is very interesting to note how neither fame nor great fortunes count for anything in the search and, more importantly, the permanence of happiness and harmony. Not at all! Could it be that fate has the last word?
