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WHY JACKIE KENNEDY QUIETLY BURNED PERSONAL LETTERS AND PHOTOS BEFORE SHE DIED
(EXCLUSIVE BOOK EXCERPT)

A new biography, 'Jackie: Public, Private, Secret,' reveals that the former
first lady ritualistically destroyed private material before her death — some
pertaining to an under-the-radar romance

By People Staff
Published on June 21, 2023 08:00AM EDT
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 


Photo:

Bettmann Archive/Getty

In the final months of her life, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis received a
Valentine’s note from a former lover, architect Jack Warnecke. The former first
lady had rarely been out of his thoughts, he told her.



According to a new biography — Jackie: Public, Private, Secret by J. Randy
Taraborrelli, which was exclusively excerpted in this week's issue of PEOPLE —
the note led to a reunion at her apartment several months before her death on
May 19, 1994, from non-Hodgkin lymphoma at age 64.



Three decades earlier, Jackie had fallen in love with the architect, who
designed the memorial grave site for President John F. Kennedy at Arlington
National Cemetery.


Jackie Kennedy's Dating History: From JFK to Aristotle


Years later, Warnecke shared his memories with Taraborrelli — with one caveat.
Out of loyalty to the famously private Jackie, Warnecke asked that everything
remain under wraps until a decade after his death. He died in 2010, when he was
91.



Now those details are among the many revealing moments shared in Taraborrelli’s
new biography. “So many of the books about Jackie are about the glamour and the
celebrity," he tells PEOPLE. "I wanted to write about the human side."



Below, an excerpt from Taraborrelli's new book, Jackie: Public, Private, Secret.



"Jackie: Public, Private, Secret" by J. Randy Taraborrelli.

It was nightfall as John Warnecke walked to 1040 Fifth Avenue to visit his
former lover, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The apartment was dark and quiet. John
Warnecke—better known as “Jack”—noticed a telescope in the corner. Jackie had
once told him she often gazed into it to see how the other half lived. He
noticed a light from one of the rooms. Wearing a pink chenille sweater over
white silk pajamas, she was seated close to the fireplace. Jackie asked Jack to
not reveal to anyone what was about to happen, not while either of them was
alive, any way.



In [our] 1998 interview, Jack said, “As I took my seat, Jackie handed me a stack
of envelopes neatly tied together with yarn. My presence that evening was part
of a ritual. Every night that week, she was inviting a trusted friend or family
member to her home to take part in it.”



Jackie untied the yarn and took a letter from the stack. She read it before
placing it into the fire. He recalled, “There were letters from Jackie’s
children, John and Caroline ... There were also letters from Jack Kennedy,
Aristotle Onassis, her father, Jack Bouvier and even a few from me.” She held
one of the photographs and stared at it. It was her and Jack [Kennedy] on the
day of his inauguration. “Keep this for me, will you?” she asked.



Jackie was by her husband’s side in the Dallas motorcade when he was
assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. Some said it sounded like a crack. Jackie Kennedy
thought it was the backfire of a motorcycle. Confused, she watched as Jack
grabbed his throat and lurched to the left. Rifle shots, all. Three in the
course of less than five seconds.



“Jack turned and I turned back,” she later recalled. “I could see a piece of his
skull coming off. He was holding out his hand and I can see this perfectly clean
piece detaching from his head. Then, he slumped in my lap.”



Jackie Kennedy climbs out of the vehicle after her husband, President John F.
Kennedy, was fatally shot on Nov. 22, 1963. ZAPRUDER FILM 1967 (Renewed 1995)
The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

Less than a year after her husband’s death, architect Jack Warnecke approached
Jackie—raising eyebrows among some in her inner circle.




It was in the middle of May 1964 when Jack Warnecke called to ask her out. “On a
date?” she asked. “Because I don’t date, Jack, and I never will again,” she
said. No, Jack told her, it wasn’t a date. It was just dinner. That night, he
showed up at her door with flowers. “But, Jack, I didn’t say yes,” she told him,
annoyed. “But you didn’t say no,” he said with a smile. “That’s when it started
between us,” Jack Warnecke recalled.



After the president was assassinated, Jackie hired Jack [Warnecke] to design his
gravesite at Arlington. Jackie told herself Jack deserved the job. Her friends
had to wonder, though. Bobby Kennedy wondered, too. He believed Jack was moving
in on Jackie too quickly.




“It’s too soon, Jackie,” Bobby told her. “For what?” she asked. “For this,” he
exclaimed. She then leveled with him: “This is none of your business, Bobby.”




In November 1964, she brought Warnecke to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis. “We
had dinner—clam chowder—and talked until the sun went down, and then talked
beyond that . . . Then, one thing led to another.”




Jackie walked him upstairs to her bedroom, the same one she’d once shared with
Jack Kennedy. Much to Jack’s surprise, she wanted to make love, and so they did.
The next morning, Jack awakened to find Jackie gone. He found her staring out at
the beach. He tried to talk about what had happened the night before, but she
didn’t want to. Instead, she asked him to leave. He realized it had been too
soon for her.




It was an emotional seesaw: up one moment, down the next. She later told Jack
Warnecke, “Everytime I think I’m having fun, I look down at myself from above
and can see that it’s all performance art.” 




Jackie Kennedy and Jack Warnecke.

Gibson Moss / Alamy Stock Photo

They dated for three years. In 1966, he planned to propose in Hawaii.




They simply began talking about marriage as if it were a fait accompli, but it
bothered Jack that no formal plans were being made, yet. Still, their intimacy
didn’t suffer. Warnecke said they had sex not only in the privacy of their
bedroom but also in cars and on beaches “and as often as possible. She was
sexual . . . alive . . . exciting to be with.”




Soon after, he called to tell her that the expansion of his architectural
firm—and their extravagant lifestyle—had left him one million dollars in debt.




After a long silence, her response was a vacant: “Oh?” Jack said he hoped it
wouldn’t totally ruin things for them. Before he hung up, he told her he loved
her. She didn’t respond. She stopped returning his calls. “Is Mr. Jack coming
over today?” little John asked his mother one afternoon. “No, honey,” she said,
scooping him up in her arms. “We won’t be seeing Mr. Jack again.”




Jackie Kennedy on the cover of People magazine, July 2023.

Jackie married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968. It was a
turbulent union that ended with his death at age 69 in 1975. Meanwhile, she
entered therapy with a psychoanalyst, Dr. Marianne Kris.




“Dr. Kris would never discuss Mrs. Onassis, citing doctor-patient
confidentiality,” said Patricia Atwood, Kris’ secretary from 1972 to 1974, in an
email. “They addressed Mrs. Onassis’s ongoing PTSD over the assassination, as
well as certain nagging issues about their marriage. He went out in a blaze of
glory, Mrs. Onassis said, according to one of the notes I read. The way he died
had completely robbed her of the right to hate him, she said. Next to that
entry, Dr. Kris wrote that her grief was anything but, as she put it, ‘tidy.’”




She discovered Dr. Kris had once treated Marilyn Monroe—long believed to have
had an affair with JFK—just one of his many infidelities.




When Jackie confronted her, [Dr.] Kris said she felt no responsibility to inform
her about any former patients in the same way she’d never reveal that she’d ever
treated Jackie. Marianne asked, “How is this relevant?” to which Jackie
responded, “How is that not relevant?”




Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Jack Warnecke.

Ron Galella/Getty

In her later years, Jackie found companionship with diamond merchant Maurice
Tempelsman. Then in early 1994, she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Two months before her death, she called Warnecke.




It had been about a month since the ritual in her apartment, during which he and
Jackie had burned letters in the fireplace. As they talked, Jackie told Jack
that after four chemotherapy treatments, her tests had come back clean. She
thought she’d beaten the disease.




Then, unbelievably, an MRI showed that it had metastasized to the membranes of
her brain and spinal cord. Jack asked her if, in reviewing her life, she had any
regrets. She said she wished she hadn’t let Nov. 22, 1963, poison the rest of
her life.




“But that’s not what happened,” Jack said, surprised. He said she had gone on
after Dallas and she had even thrived. “But I never got over it,” Jackie said,
sadly. “I got past it maybe, but never over it.” “What a shame,“ she now told
Jack, “to spend so much time tormented by a thing I could never change.” Then
again, Jackie mused, maybe that’s what her husband deserved—for her to never
really get over it.




Jack remembered, “I told her I never stopped loving her. I thought she was going
to say the same to me. Instead, she said, ‘That’s such a lovely thing to say,
Jack. Thank you. I’d like to just leave it there if I may.’” They promised to
talk again soon. They never did.




Excerpted from Jackie: Public, Private, Secret. Copyright © 2023 by J. Randy
Taraborrelli, with permission from St. Martin’s Press.







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