What's The 'Kennedy Curse'? The Dark Theory Resurfaces As JFK's Granddaughter, Tatiana, Dies At 35

The Kennedy family is not only famous for its chain of powerful politicians, but also for its almost relentless pattern of tragedy. The family’s unbroken chain of deaths has ignited the infamous “Kennedy Curse”, a phrase that has long haunted America’s most famous political dynasty: from the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy to a string of plane crashes, accidents, overdoses, and terminal illnesses. 

The popular theory has resurfaced following the tragic passing of  JFK’s granddaughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, who died of cancer at just 35. Her story adds to the Kennedy bloodline’s long history of heartbreaks, including the death of her uncle, John F. Kennedy Jr., in a plane crash and the loss of her grandmother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, to cancer.

Tatiana Schlossberg dies at 35, a month after announcing her cancer diagnosis

Tatiana Schlossberg lost her battle to cancer on Tuesday, December 30, 2025, at the age of 35. She was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a rare and aggressive form of cancer, in May 2024, and it was only in November 2025 that she publicly announced her diagnosis through her final essay in The New Yorker. Doctors discovered her condition only hours after she gave birth to her second child. What first looked like a pregnancy-related blood abnormality turned out to be an aggressive cancer that left her with a year to live.

She underwent chemotherapy, a bone-marrow transplant, and experimental treatments. None was enough. On Tuesday, her family confirmed her death with a brief statement through the JFK Library Foundation: 

“Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts.”

Tatiana is survived by her husband, physician George Moran, and their two young children. Her death feels especially heavy because of the history behind it. Here's a closer look at the infamous myth of the Kennedy bloodline.

What’s the “Kennedy Curse”?

The idea of a Kennedy curse emerged after a staggering series of tragedies that befell the bloodline: assassinations, fatal accidents, overdoses, and illnesses spanning generations. At one point, Senator Ted Kennedy, the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, openly wondered if the curse was real after the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident. In a 2019 interview with PEOPLE, author J. Randy Taraborrelli, who wrote The Kennedy Heirs, said:

“It was Ted Kennedy who came up with the concept of the curse after Chappaquiddick, when he was giving his public address, and 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.”

Even Tatiana Schlossberg herself couldn’t dismiss that history, especially considering the unmissable parallels between her and her grandmother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who died in 1994 after a brief battle with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, another rare variant of blood cancer. While she never explicitly commented on the curse theory, her reflections in her final essay carried the awareness that it was yet another tragic chapter in the family’s dark legend.

The Kennedy bloodline’s tragic losses through the decades

The legend of tragedy in the Kennedy dynasty, America’s “First Family”, began with the death of Joseph P. Kennedy, the eldest son of Joseph Sr. and Rose Kennedy, who died at age 29 during a secret WWII mission, when his aircraft blew up mid-air while flying over the English Channel. He died on August 12, 1944.

Just four years later, on May 13, 1948, Joseph Sr. and Rose Kennedy’s daughter, Kathleen, died in a plane crash in France. She was only 28, flying to the French Riviera with her lover, Earl Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam. 

In 1963, the family lost two Kennedys: after the death of his infant son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy (40 hours old) on August 7, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22. He was in a motorcade with his wife, Jaqueline, in Dallas, when Lee Harvey Oswald shot him dead. 

On June 6, 1968, shortly after winning the California presidential primary, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles. Then, on July 18, 1969, came the infamous Chappaquiddick incident involving Ted Kennedy: the late ex-senator drove off Dyke Bridge near Martha’s Vineyard, and the accident killed his 28-year-old aide, Mary Jo Kopechne, who was also in the car.

In April 1984, Robert F. Kennedy’s 28-year-old son, David Anthony Kennedy, died of an overdose. Then again, in December 1997, his brother, Michael L. Kennedy, died after a ski incident on New Year’s Eve. The tragedy struck again on July 16, 1999, when John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette, and her sister Lauren Bessette died in a plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.

In September 2011, Edward Kennedy’s daughter, Kara, died of a post-workout heart failure, after being diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002. Months later, in May 2012, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, died by suicide. In August 2019, RFK’s granddaughter, Saoirse Kennedy Hill, died from an accidental overdose at age 22. A year later, in April 2020, Saoirse’s elder sister, Maeve Fahey Kennedy McKean, and her 8-year-old son, Gideon, died from a drowning accident in the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland. And now, with Tatiana Schlossberg’s untimely death, it adds yet another painful chapter to the unending saga.

Tatiana’s surviving family

Tatiana Schlossberg married her college sweetheart, George Moran, a physician, in September 2017 during a ceremony in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The couple welcomed their first child, a son, in 2022 and completed their family with the birth of a daughter in 2024.

In her essay A Battle With My Blood, Schlossberg wrote heartbreakingly about the pain of knowing her son might retain faint memories of her, while her daughter would grow up without any at all. She also mourned the life she would not get to share with her husband, calling him “perfect” and lamenting the future she felt unfairly taken from her.

What the public often frames as myth is, in reality, a repeated, very human grief. Tatiana’s death also leaves behind a voice that mattered, words that endure, and a life defined by more than tragedy.

Read Next: Who Is Tatiana Schlossberg's Husband, George Moran? Duo Met At Yale, Here's Their Love Story

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