Kennedy family tragedies

On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, died in a plane crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. Her sister was also aboard the plane.

Mary Kennedy, right, from whom Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed for divorce in 2010, was found dead on May 16, 2012. A medical examiner said she died of asphyxiation due to hanging. She was 52.

Kara Kennedy, daughter of Ted Kennedy, died of a heart attack in 2011 after her daily workout. Seen here, she speaks at her father's funeral in 2009.

Doctors diagnosed Ted Kennedy with a malignant brain tumor in 2008 and he had surgery the same year. He died more than a year later at age 77.

Michael Kennedy, one of RFK's 11 children, died in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado, in 1997. The father of three had suffered an onslaught of negative publicity over an alleged affair with a family babysitter.

David Kennedy, another son of RFK, died in 1984 of a drug overdose in a hotel after being ousted from the family vacation home in Palm Beach.

In 1973, Ted Kennedy's 12-year-old son Edward Jr. lost a leg to bone cancer. Kennedy is seen here skiing with his father in 1974.

Joe Kennedy, the eldest son of RFK, was involved in a 1973 car accident that left a female passenger paralyzed for life. He later served as a Massachusetts congressman and considered a bid for governor but decided against it, citing family troubles.

Sen. Ted Kennedy drove a car off a bridge on Massachusetts' Chappaquiddick Island after a party in 1969. Aide Mary Jo Kopechne died in the accident. He is shown wearing a neck brace at her funeral. Controversy over the incident effectively ended his presidential aspirations.

While campaigning for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968.

In 1964, Ted Kennedy suffered a broken back when his private plane crashed in Southampton, Massachusetts. Indiana Sen. Birch Bayh also survived the crash, but the pilot and one of Kennedy's aides were killed.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated during a motorcade in Dallas on November 22, 1963. He was 46.

At just 28, Kathleen Kennedy died in a plane crash in 1948. She had married William John Robert Cavendish, the Marquess of Hartington, who was killed in World War II.

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the eldest son of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, died at 29 in a plane crash during World War II.

President Kennedy's sister, Rosemary Kennedy (center), had part of her brain removed in 1941 in a relatively new procedure known as a prefrontal lobotomy. The family had long described her as "intellectually slow." The operation only worsened her condition and she was institutionalized until her death in 2005 at age 86.