The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “We need to help Mom, whatever we can do,” Patrick agreed.

  By this time, Patrick was thirty-seven. He had a doughy, round face and a haircut that was pretty much in the same style he’d had since he was ten—a shock of brown hair with bangs, short on the sides and long on the top. Like most of his relatives, he had that great Kennedy smile. He was good-looking, but in his own haphazard sort of way. Unlike many of his male cousins, he didn’t care whether he appealed to the opposite sex. In his mind, he had important work to do in Congress and he was devoted to it. He always believed that when the right woman came along, he’d know it.

  Teddy, now forty-three, actually looked more like what people thought the Kennedys were supposed to look like than did Patrick. He was squared-jawed like his father and always meticulously groomed and decked out in a finely tailored suit. He seemed more like a politician than his brother, who actually was a politician. “How in the world did we get here,” Teddy asked, according to the attorney’s memory, “with some guy we don’t even know having so much power over Mom? We can’t let this happen. We need to find this guy and we need to stop him.”

  Indeed, someone had been nosing around in Joan’s affairs. Her children didn’t know who he was or what he was after, only that his name was Webster Janssen and that he was sending letters to them and their lawyer announcing that he and Joan had reached an agreement. Under his advisement, she was selling property she owned, and he was going to be in charge of everything. He was going to be in charge? Someone they didn’t even know? No. That wasn’t going to happen.

  * * *

  AFTER THAT TERRIBLE night Joan Kennedy was found on a Boston street in the rain, her children proposed an informal family contract to her under the advice of a therapist. It outlined her problems and stipulated that if she continued to drink alcohol, they’d be authorized to take over her financial affairs with Teddy as her temporary guardian.

  Joan had, at this point, at least $9 million in holdings, including her condo in Boston and summer home on Squaw Island. Begrudgingly, she signed the deal, if only to show good faith with her children. She then went into a rehab treatment in Florida for a month. As soon as she got out and returned to Boston, she relapsed. The children then decided to obtain a statement from her doctor saying she was incapable of caring for her personal and financial affairs. They intended to enforce the informal contract; they wanted Joan placed under the restrictions of court-ordered care, with them responsible for her affairs, Teddy the overseer. This was a heartbreaking turn of events, but a necessary one. Kara, Teddy, and Patrick were torn between their desire to help their mother and their concern that she would never forgive them. A judge signed off on it.

  Into the middle of this family quandary came Webster Janssen. As lawyers and accountants sifted through Joan’s holdings while doing her taxes, they were thunderstruck to discover that prior to Teddy being named her guardian, she’d transferred the title of one of her homes into a trust that was controlled by Janssen. He was, apparently, encouraging Joan to sell the family’s waterfront home on Squaw Island. (Even though Squaw Island was a five-minute walk along the beach to the other homes owned by the Kennedys—0.9 miles, to be exact—it was still considered part of the Kennedy compound.)

  When Joan’s children confronted her to ask what was going on and who was Janssen, they were told in no uncertain terms to mind their own business. Yes, she had been working with Janssen, she said, and yes, she planned to make the sale, and her mind was made up about it. The siblings then asked their father about Janssen. He said he vaguely recalled the name but couldn’t quite remember from where. It was strange, he agreed, a real mystery.

  What the Kennedys didn’t realize at that time was that Webster Janssen was actually Joan’s second cousin. His mother, Belle, and Joan’s mother, Virginia, were cousins. It was Ethel who figured it all out once people in the family began asking around about him. She went into one of her dozens of scrapbooks and came to the conclusion that he’d been an usher at Ted and Joan’s wedding back in 1958.

  As it happened, Janssen, a trust investment officer at Citibank and Morgan Guaranty Trust, was not only a relative but a confidant of Joan’s. According to what he would later recall, she had kept him from the family on purpose. “Why do they have to know everything?” she asked, according to Janssen. “She felt her privacy was constantly being invaded by Kennedys of every generation, and she wanted to compartmentalize some aspects of her life,” he said. “I was one of those aspects. She was a woman trying desperately not to lose control.”

  As Janssen recalled it, he and Joan had been driving from her home to Boston to visit relatives in Maine when she told him she was worried about her finances. She said that all the stints she’d had in expensive rehabilitation centers had depleted her bank accounts. Because he was experienced in such matters, Janssen later reviewed Joan’s portfolio and felt he could assist her. “She was in over her head,” he recalled, “and it was a real mess. She’s a nice person, and people were taking advantage of her,” he said. “I didn’t like what I saw. And then this family contract? Not even legal? Just written out and signed by Joan under duress, giving her kids control? No. She needed money; she had bills, mostly rehab bills not covered by insurance. She was worried.”

  When he asked how much time Joan spent at her home on the compound, she told him that it was no more than two months out of the year. “The New Wife is there,” she said, referring to Vicki; she often also referred to herself as “the Old Wife.” She said that while she got along with “the New Wife,” “Ethel and Eunice and the rest of those old biddies are there, too, and I’m sick of being judged by them. Even my own housekeeper judges me.”

  “Really?” Janssen asked.

  “Yes,” Joan said, “you should see the way that woman looks at me.”

  “Fire her, then.”

  “I want to,” Joan said, “but then I’d have to deal with my busybody kids about it, and God forbid I should make a decision of my own.”

  Webster suggested that Joan put the house on the market, saying he believed she could get about $7 million for it, which would be a sizable nest egg. He also told her that she needed to inform Ted and her children that he was advising her. Joan agreed to tell Ted about Janssen, but not the children. “She later told me that Ted approved of me and was just glad to have someone looking out for her,” Janssen said. “I came to later understand, though, that this wasn’t true. She hadn’t told anyone.”

  In the opinion of Joan’s children, there was no reason to sell the house, which had been in the family for decades. It was part of their cherished history; all three siblings had spent much of their youth there with their cousins and had many happy memories. “It’s a piece of all of us,” Kara said of the house. Joan had money in the bank, they said. She just needed to cash in some annuities; they’d figure it all out for her. Whatever happened, though, one thing was sure: they were not going to let her sell that house.

  Testing Her Power

  There was a lot of discussion about how to handle Webster Janssen. Teddy and Patrick simply wanted to strong-arm him and get him out of the picture. However, Kara had a different perspective. “What’s the endgame here?” she kept asking. “Because it can’t just be an escalation of a war with Mother.” She realized that whatever they said to Janssen would likely get back to Joan and make things worse. Her brothers had to agree.

  Kara said she wanted to handle Janssen on her own, or at least have the initial meeting with him. She wanted to take charge of the situation as much for herself as for her brothers. She needed to do it. It was important to her that she be allowed to continue in her effort to get her life back after her cancer. Though her brothers were concerned, ultimately it was decided to acquiesce to her wishes; they felt it would probably do her a lot of good.

  The meeting with Janssen was set up in one of the Kennedy lawyers’ offices in Boston. “I got called in without much time to prepare,” Webster Janssen recalled many years later.
“When I told Joan about it, she said I should be careful. ‘They’re sharks,’ she told me. ‘Who, Joan?’ I asked. ‘Your children? Or their lawyers?’ She looked at me and said, ‘All of ’em.’”

  When Janssen, who was seventy at the time, appeared at the office, he found Kara flanked by two attorneys, one male, one female. Also, Ted had asked two of the family’s longtime business associates to sit in on the meeting. “It was in a conference room around a long table,” recalled Janssen, “two people on each side at the end of it, and Kara seated at the head. She was thin. Short brown hair streaked with gray. As soon as she saw me, she rose, shook my hand, and offered me a beverage. She was nice, welcoming.”

  “Kara started by telling Janssen that she understood he was somehow related to her mother,” recalled one of the business associates sent by Ted. “He confirmed it, saying his mom and her grandmother were cousins. Kara blinked several times. ‘So what does that make you and me?’ she asked. He said he wasn’t certain, that he’d have to think about it. ‘What does that make you and my mother?’ she asked. Proudly, he quickly answered, ‘Second cousins.’ At this, Kara glanced over to me and shook her head in dismay. ‘Certainly, you can’t expect that the Kennedys would allow you authority over my mother given such a distant relationship?’ she asked.”

  Janssen then, in an effort to buttress his case, confirmed that he’d not only been at her parents’ wedding, he’d been at Kara’s to Michael Allen. Kara said she most certainly didn’t remember seeing him there. Fine. There were a lot of people at the wedding, she conceded. Janssen then noted that the fact that he’d been a licensed securities professional for the last forty-five years and that Joan had asked for his help should be enough for her children to just accept him. “Well, it’s not,” Kara declared. She then asked how much Janssen was being paid. Janssen answered by saying the terms of his financial arrangement with Joan were between the two of them, and he wouldn’t disclose them without her permission. Kara studied him carefully. “Okay, look, the Kennedys want you to step aside,” she said, getting to the point.

  “But that’s for your mother to decide,” he protested.

  “No,” Kara said firmly. “That’s for me to decide.” She added that if he didn’t turn over all documents relating to Joan by the end of the next day, “the Kennedys” would have no choice but to bring litigation against him. “The way she kept using the word ‘Kennedys’ sent a bit of a shiver down my spine,” Webster Janssen recalled of the conversation. “I got it that she was referring to Kennedy power.”

  “Before the meeting ended, Kara laid it on the line. ‘I’m very serious, Mr. Janssen. We don’t require your services, and neither does my mother,’” recalled Ted’s business associate. “‘I advocate for Joan Kennedy,’ she said. ‘Not you. Not anyone else. And by the way,’ she concluded, ‘you can be sure that we’ll be rescinding that trust. Won’t we?’ she asked, staring at me. I said, ‘Oh, yes, absolutely.’”

  Janssen said he would have to discuss all of it with Joan. He also proposed that he could perhaps be an ally to the Kennedys in helping to make good decisions for Joan, adding, “I am not the enemy. I am on your mother’s side.”

  Kara stood up to signal that the meeting was over. “I actually don’t know how I can make this any clearer to you, Mr. Janssen,” she said, “but the bottom line is this: We. Don’t. Know. You,” she concluded, deliberately punctuating each word to give it weight.

  “I saw that we were at an impasse, so I stood up, as did the two attorneys,” Webster Janssen recalled. “We all shook hands, and Kara thanked me for coming in. ‘You never know, I may be able to help you,’ I again stated. ‘Who knows? Maybe we can even be friends one day.’ I was just trying to be nice and keep the door open. ‘Maybe one day,’ Kara said as she extended her hand out to me. ‘But not today.’”

  To Litigate Against Mother

  “The one thing Webster Janssen didn’t want was a prolonged, expensive legal battle with the Kennedys,” recalled one of the observers at the conference with Janssen, “and the meeting he had with Kara suggested that this was exactly what was in store for him. I thought Kara was tough as nails and had done a stellar job in representing the family’s interests. I told Ted, wow, your daughter is really something else. You should have been there to see her in action. She was stunning in the authority and power she wielded. I had known Kara since she was a little girl, so it was fantastic for me to see what kind of a woman she had become.”

  “I called Joan as soon as I got back to my office and told her what had happened,” added Webster Janssen. “She was angry. ‘How dare Kara say that?’ she told me. ‘No one advocates for me,’ she said. ‘I advocate for myself.’”

  Janssen was already taking a beating in the media, and he knew it was because of the family. “There were statements in local newspapers impugning my professionalism and integrity,” he recalled, “statements I could have sued them for, but I didn’t want to go up against the Kennedy machine. It would have cost an arm and a leg and taken years to litigate, and, quite frankly, I didn’t want to drag Joan through it. Therefore, I urged Joan to just let it go. She was incredibly angry, felt she was losing her freedom little by little to her kids.”

  Eventually, Joan decided to acquiesce to her children’s wishes and stop working with Webster Janssen. Though upset, she dissolved the trust she’d set up with him relating to the house. She wasn’t going to take the house off the market, though. “Too bad for my kids,” she told Janssen. “It’s my house, not theirs. They’ve lived like spoiled brats their entire lives, and enough is enough.”

  Disgruntled over their mother’s decision to sell the property, Joan’s children decided to fight the sale in court. A trial was set for June 2005.

  “She’s not happy with the fact we have sought guardianship,” said Ted of his mother to The Boston Globe. “She’s basically trying to retaliate against her own children by taking one of the things we love the most, which is Cape Cod. It’s sad. This is the house we grew up in; this is our family home.

  “The most important thing to understand is we’re trying to save our mother’s life, simply put,” he added. “That’s what’s at stake. You can imagine how bad this situation has gotten for us to risk angering her and undertaking this legal action against our own mother. That’s the situation. We tried to keep this private until the story broke a couple of weeks ago. She tripped and fell because she was intoxicated. That is just exactly what we’re trying to stop. It’s not easy for anyone who has faced a situation like this. I don’t know if we’re going to be successful but we have to try something. We’re in a desperate situation.”

  It was really getting out of hand. Finally, Ted asked Vicki what she thought. “My opinion has no place in this,” she said. When he asked if she might talk to Joan, she said she wasn’t going to use her good relationship with his ex-wife as leverage. Obviously, she said, Joan was angry because she felt as if her wishes were being ignored. Ted would have to speak to her about it himself, she said. When he finally did, he told Joan that they must avoid a trial at all costs for the sake of the family. He was very persuasive. Eventually, Joan reluctantly agreed to what was called “an extension of the temporary guardianship,” an arrangement which put her finances under the control of two court-appointed supervisors outside the family. Still, the lawyer representing her children claimed she had no legal authority to sell the Cape Cod house. He even put the word out that prospective buyers could have a real fight with the Kennedys on their hands. “Just more of the same old Kennedy backstabbing,” Joan said, upset. “Clearly, my children have learned from the worst offender of all, their father.” Frustrated, Joan took the property off the market so that she could have time to figure out how to proceed.

  After thinking about it, she became even more filled with rage and the sense that she shouldn’t allow others to make decisions for her, even her kids, and especially her ex-husband. She’d done a lot for Ted over the years, even giving him an annulment so that
he could marry Vicki in the Catholic Church, and this is how he repaid her? By helping their kids strip away her independence?

  The inter-family legal battle continued and caused even more hurt feelings. It all finally ended with Joan securing her right to legally put the Squaw Island house back on the market. Kara then pleaded with her father, who had the right of first refusal as per the divorce settlement, to buy the property in order to keep it in the family. However, he declined. Though Ted was making about $165,000 a year as a senator, he was worth at least $50 million, so it does seem like he could have purchased the property if he had really wanted to do so. Since no one else seemed to be in a position to make the purchase either, the house was finally sold to a buyer with the best offer.

  Why Joan had been so determined to see the house sold remained quite the mystery. She and Ted had spent their summers, and often other seasons, for almost twenty-five years as husband and wife there. After the divorce, Joan would continue to own it for almost another twenty-five years. That was fifty years of memories. Her children felt they were well versed on the state of Joan’s finances and didn’t feel money was really the motivation. Was it just because she wanted to win a big fight against them?

  This Kennedy family war had taken a real toll. Soon after it was resolved, Patrick—by this time a sixth-term Democrat—announced that he wouldn’t be doing that which his father and many of his supporters had hoped he’d do, which was to challenge Senator Lincoln Chafee, a Republican, in 2006. This was a tough decision to make for a guy who had spent his entire life looking for ways to be special, especially in the eyes of his father. “I had never actually wanted to run for the Senate—or, rather, whenever I considered it, I quickly realized that the additional media scrutiny could present an insurmountable challenge, and with my illness I was safer in the House,” Patrick would later explain.