John F. Kennedy, Jr.
On July the 16th in 1999, a Piper Saratoga light airplane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha’s Vineyard. The impact of the crash killed the pilot, John Kennedy, Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and her sister, Lauren Bessette. The young man who could have been the second JFK to sit behind the Resolute Desk, under which he had played as a small child, was still strapped to the pilot’s seat when Navy divers located the aircraft’s wreckage on July the 21st. The accidental death of the junior JFK, his wife and his sister-in-law was a tragedy that shocked and saddened the entire world; but one man saw an opportunity to capitalize on the tragedy by crass exploitation: that man was C. David Heymann.
Not long after the Saratoga reportedly nosedived directly into the ocean, Clem Heymann began to appear on various television programs during which he announced that he spoke with JFK, Jr. a mere nine days before the tragic crash of July the 16th. On July the 23rd in 1999, Heymann appeared on “Hardball with Chris Matthews.” I actually became friendly with John shortly after the publication of A Woman Named Jackie in 1989, Clem asserted. According to Jacqueline’s unauthorized and frequently criticized biographer, he dispatched a letter to John Kennedy, Jr. and requested an interview during that book’s research phase. JFK, Jr. ignored Clem’s letter; but then, Clem asserted, the junior JFK managed a telephone call six months after A Woman Named Jackie had been published. Clem then continued and informed Matthews: As a result of that particular call, we began an on-again, off-again alliance that endured for the rest of his life, until recently.1
Clem’s television appearances began after gossip columnist Cindy Adams published a story in the New York Post, a story that revealed what Heymann had revealed to her: JFK, Jr. did not want to fly and deliver his wife’s sister, Lauren, to Martha’s Vineyard. Doing so would require him to make two landings. He simply was not an experienced pilot, JFK, Jr. had admitted to Heymann, or so Heymann reported to Cindy. Despite Heymann’s reputation for writing biographies loaded with and criticized for countless inaccuracies, fabrications, outright lies and plagiarism, Cindy did not even attempt to verify Clem’s story. Purported to be a journalist, she was not concerned with Clem’s discredited past publications. She rather nonchalantly admitted that she did not care one way or another about Heymann’s reputation except as it concerns me.2Besides, with whom could she verify Mr. Heymann’s amazing story? JFK, Jr.? The tragedy transpired late on a Friday, and JFK, Jr.? He was dead. So … the NY Post declared, using tall, bold letters, the following headline: HE DIDN’T WANT TO FLY. Then in smaller print: JFK, Jr.: I’m really not that experienced a pilot. In an article published on Observer.com, Andrew Goldman observed: Thus, before the plane had been found, in those first few days of media spray and spittle, before the facts coalesced, the idea that somehow the tragedy had been the fault of the Bessette sisters entered the media airspace around the story […].3Once again, some tremendous damage had been done by C. David Heymann.
Clem’s revelation that he and JFK, Jr. had shared a relationship that began in 1989 generated consternation among associates and other persons who actually knew John Kennedy, Jr. They had never heard the junior JFK utter the name C. David Heymann. Those associates and actual friends managed a wry smile of disbelief: why would the junior JFK befriend and otherwise collaborate with a man who had essentially both libeled and slandered each of his parents and his uncle? Heymann salaciously alleged that his mother, the former First Lady of the United States, and his uncle, the former Attorney General of the United States, engaged in a sexually intimate relationship after his father’s tragic assassination, and that his mother and his uncle became sexually intimate with the Russian dancer, Rudolph Nureyev. Rudolph and JFK, Jr.’s uncle were, at the time, standing in a public telephone booth contended Heymann. But then, Nureyev was not the only person, according to Heymann’s books, with whom each of John Jr.’s significant relatives became sexually intimate. But then, Clem Heymann’s books focused inordinately on his subject’s sex lives, essentially to the point of voyeurism.
Andrew Goldman interviewed various employees of JFK, Jr.’s magazine, George; and not one of the interviewees could confirm that Mr. Heymann was acquainted with Mr. Kennedy. Moreover, another New York Post gossip columnist simply did not accept Heymann’s tale: I can’t believe John Kennedy would have done anything more than punch out an author who claimed what his uncle did to his mother, said Neal Travis. Then, Elizabeth Mitchell, George’s executive editor for three years, stated: As far as all the time I knew John, he never had talked to Heymann. Additionally, Clem Heymann’s name did not appear in JFK, Jr.’s personal Rolodex and did not come up in any conversation with anyone employed by the magazine. John Kennedy, Jr.’s calendar did not, on any date, have a meeting scheduled with Clem, and the magazine’s telephone records did not have any indications whatsoever that Heymann had ever telephoned the magazine’s offices. Of course, Mr. Heymann said that he usually called Mr. Kennedy at home and that he tape recorded those conversations. He declined to play the tapes for The Observer.4Standard operating procedure for the always transparent C. David Heymann.
If the preceding is not enough to cast a dense amount of dark shade on Clem Heymann’s JFK, Jr. yarn, a person familiar with Lauren Bessette, along with her travel plans, informed The Observer that Miss Bessette did not ask for a lift to Martha’s Vineyard until July the 12th. Remember, Heymann’s statement regarding when he spoke to JFK, Jr., nine days before the tragic crash, fixed the date of Clem’s purported conversation with the junior JFK to July the 7th, five days before his sister-in-law evidently asked her brother-in-law for a lift to the Vineyard.5
But … perhaps, there were other reliable means and methods that might verify Clem’s tale.
A Meeting in 1995
According to Heymann, JFK, Jr. visited the author in his Belnord apartment on the Upper West Side: he came by to leave a wedding gift, four pieces of Tiffany gold. Heymann’s marriage to an English book publicist ended in annulment and the golden wedding gift mysteriously disappeared, stolen by a maid perhaps. His former bride returned to England and evidently Clem did not volunteer her name.
A Meeting in 1997
Once again, according to Heymann, JFK, Jr. visited the author in his country residence located in Sherman, Connecticut. When asked to provide a witness to the junior Kennedy’s visit, Heymann referred The Observer to Mel Wulf, Heymann’s attorney, who furnished the name of a former Heymann girlfriend, Roberta Feinberg. Clem informed Roberta that he would be meeting with John Kennedy, Jr.; but an allergic reaction to medication sent her into hiding. She did not have a actual face-to-face encounter with the young Kennedy. Roberta testified:
David meets with a lot of people. At the time I didn’t’ think it was such an extraordinary event. I mean, I did want to be there, but because I had this allergic reaction, I couldn’t. So I was pretty much in one area of the house, so that I was not privy to the actual meeting, other than I was a little curious and when I heard the door close I looked outside and I saw the back of a figure leaving the house with dark hair. That was it. To the best of my knowledge, he said he was meeting with John F. Kennedy Jr. and I assumed it was John F. Kennedy Jr.
Certainly not any type of confirmation that the departing head she observed was, in fact, John Kennedy, Jr. The head could have belonged to any man.
A Meeting in 1998 or 1999
Yet again, according to Heymann, JFK, Jr. and his wife shared a double-date with the author and his girlfriend. Their evening together began at the Madison Pub and then transferred to the Right Bank Café on Madison Avenue; but Rick Serranos, a ten year employee of the pub, who stated that he worked seven days a week from 10:00 AM until closing, disputed Heymann’s assertion. On one occasion, Serranos observed the junior JFK peering through the window of the bar; but Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, as far as he knew, was never even near the bar. Besides, if the Kennedys had been there with another couple drinking, Serranos asserted, he would have been told about it. The appearance of celebrities like the Kennedys do not pass unnoticed or go unreported. Furthermore, the manager of the Right Bank Café also disputed Heymann’s dinner story. Jim, the café’s manager for fourteen years who refused to give Goldman his last name, said John Kennedy hadn’t been through the doors of the restaurant in at least two years. Jim then added:
When you get a guy like him, the whole place stands still. Believe me. And especially the couple. You wouldn’t hear the end of it. Years ago, when Bruce Springsteen came in with his girlfriend, that was a big thing. Big things like that you’d hear about.
When asked to provide the name of his date for that evening, Heymann asserted that she currently lived in California and that they interacted infrequently; however, Heymann’s attorney provided the name Gerry Visco, an administrator at Columbia University. Gerry testified that she was currently Clem Heymann’s girlfriend and that they had shared an apartment for the past two years. Odd. Evidently Goldman did not investigate the obvious contradiction regarding Ms. Visco’s place of residency. Even so, Gerry corroborated Clem’s double-date anecdote; but be that as it may, the story did not end with Gerry’s apparent corroboration.
Geraldine Winifred Visco
An extremely unusual person and woman, Gerry Visco served as the Classics Department Administrator at Columbia University for many years, a career from which she retired in 2015. At the age of 68, Gerry departed Planet Earth on May the 9th in 2023. Despite my ardent efforts, I have not been able to verify her date of birth or the disposition of her body. A memoriam published on June the 13th in 2023, by Columbia’s Department of Classics, noted that:
Gerry was a very able departmental administrator […]. Beyond her professional expertise, however, she made an indelible impression on generations of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. Gerry’s occasionally unconventional style was the stuff of legend, as was the thoughtful kindness that underlay her sometimes gruff demeanor. […] She was endlessly colorful of character, with a rich and varied existence beyond her day job—a legend in old-style New York nightlife which she documented in her photography.6
Prior to Gerry’s relocation into eternity, Donna Morel located the unusual but highly regarded former administrator; and Donna obtained an interview that Gerry allowed to be recorded. Graciously, Donna provided me with a copy of the audio file of her interview with Gerry. To what Gerry testified, while maybe not surprising relative to C. David Heymann and his well-known dishonesty, you may find her revelations slightly shocking.
Gerry asserted, that even though Heymann was an excellent writer, he also made up quotes a lot of times. When Donna suggested that Heymann also invented individuals and story lines, Gerry agreed: Yes, he did. Then she added:
Some of the information he had is accurate but some of it is bullshit. He was very thorough, like he would do a lot of interviews with people but some of the interviews he totally made up and they were totally fraudulent some of them for sure but I would say there’s still some stuff in the books that’s of interest, it’s just that, umm, that you can’t just, that some of the quotes are basically things that he made up.
Gerry admitted that she conducted and also recorded several telephone interviews for Heymann, but she stopped short of saying that she obtained some valid information during those interviews. She clearly asserted: But some of the quotes he had were totally bullshit for sure. Regardless, then, of the information obtained, during what could have been a valid interview with valid testimony, Heymann frequently inserted fabricated quotations from the mouths of fabricated interviewees; or as Donna Morel accurately commented in an email:
[…] although Visco states Heymann did some great interviews and some of his work was good, truth and insight were left in the editing room. He recorded when he interviewed. I listened to those interviews (they were more phone conversations than interviews). In my estimation, 95-99 percent of his biographic trash was entirely fabricated. I have his research files that document that nearly all of the quotes and “interviews” were fabricated.
What else does a reader need to know?
But … what about Clem’s John Kennedy, Jr. yarn? Gerry collaborated Heymann’s story for Andrew Goldman, telling him that she was
[…] Mr. Heymann’s date that June evening. Ms. Visco, who works as an office administrator in the department of classics at Columbia University, said she is Mr. Heymann’s current girlfriend and has lived in his apartment for two years. She backed up Mr. Heymann’s account of the drink at the Madison Pub, she said that Mr. Kennedy had used the phone to track down his wife, who arrived late.7
When Donna Morel questioned Gerry about that story, she responded that Heymann completely fabricated the entire story, the alleged relationship with John Kennedy, Jr., the alleged telephone calls, the meetings and the alleged double date; but why would Gerry corroborate a story that she knew was completely false?
On November the 24th in 2017, Donna Morel dispatched an email to Gerry Visco in which she posed the following: Did Clem Heymann push her to corroborate the JFK, Jr. story for Andrew Goldman; and if so, did Clem instruct her regarding what she should say? Gerry responded the following day: Heymann did push me to make the statement to back up his storyline. We didn’t actually have a meeting with JFK Jr and Carolyn. I was afraid to deny it because David Heymann was violent to me. During the course of her conversation with Donna, Gerry mentioned that Heymann was arrested for striking her. How often Heymann was violent, Gerry did not reveal; but she said the author was often a difficult and horrid man with whom she had trouble cohabitating; and even though the police wanted her to pursue charges, she decided not to do so. Evidently, at the time, she was operating under the impression that Clem intended to marry her, as he had promised to do, but never did.
Gerry did not comment on the possibility that Heymann gave her instructions on how to respond to Andrew Goldman, but I believe we can safely conclude that Clem was more than clear and told her what to say.
Same Event, Differing Accounts
On July the 19th in 1999, Cathy Griffin agreed to pay C. David Heymann $10K for an exclusive interview regarding John F. Kennedy, Jr. for publication in New Idea Magazine. Two days would elapse before the aircraft’s wreckage and the bodies of JFK, Jr., his wife and her sister, would be discovered. The resultant article appeared in New Idea Magazine ten days later. Virtually three years later, Heymann also wrote an article about JFK, Jr. that appeared in the Mail on Sunday tabloid on February the 3rd in 2002. Certainly, the preceding facts are not remarkable in and of themselves. Perhaps the 1999 article was slightly premature and ill-timed and rendered Griffin and Heymann as vulturesque and lacking any sympathy or compassion. Perhaps their callous, unsympathetic behavior was also unremarkable considering the nature of the Main Stream Media and the essence of Clem Heymann. The remarkable fact about those two articles is this: both essentially described the same event, the double date with JFK, Jr. and his wife, Carolyn. Remarkably, each article is diametrically different.
In his New Idea article, Clem described Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy as a gregarious, charming and intelligent young woman who, from the moment she sat down, took over the conversation […]. When she talked, John listened with great respect. No matter how lofty the topic, he was captivated and she was respectful of his views as well. To Clem, who appeared to have been smitten by the junior JFK’s wife, described her as simple and elegant, a Jacqueline Kennedy with blonde hair, a young woman who possessed the former First Lady’s style and control. Clem was effusive:
But it was Carolyn who had the style of his mother and the control. Even though I felt there were moments where her talk bordered on the mundane, she was so charming and peppered her stories with such theatrical delivery that they suddenly became interesting as the sort of examination of a modern-day socialite. She and John shared another thing in common: a terrific sense of humor.
According to Clem, despite the difficulties that the couple had experienced during the early days of their marriage, JFK, Jr. reported to Clem that the marriage was on solid ground. May I speculate? The persons who read that article in New Idea were probably relieved to learn that the Prince of Camelot and his Princess Bride were extremely happy and extremely compatible, a well-adjusted and darling couple who could boast great potential and a great future.
But wait … there’s more.
Fast forward three years to February of 2002 and Clem Heymann’s Mail on Sunday8article. Heymann, who claimed to be the Kennedy Family’s authorized biographer, a completely spurious assertion, repeated some of the details surrounding the alleged double date; but he noted that the evening out with the young Kennedy couple transpired eleven months before the fatal 1999 plane crash. That being the case, the double date must have transpired sometime in August of 1998; however, Clem had previously informed Andrew Goldman that the double date happened last June, meaning in June of 1999. Tongue-in-cheek, I pose this question: which assertion should we accept as factual?
In Clem’s Mail on Sunday article, he mentioned his girlfriend, Gerry Visco, who he did not mention in his New Idea concoction; and while the geography of the double date was the same in each article, Clem delineated the Prince of Camelot and his Princess Bride wildly different. Heymann replaced the charming and loquacious Carolyn with a sullen, nervous and silent Carolyn. While in Clem’s first article, Carolyn buzzed into the watering hole attired in simple but expensive black slacks, in the revised article, with her hair pulled neatly back, Carolyn sauntered into the Madison Pub a full thirty minutes late, wearing a navy blue trouser suit. After some small talk and a glass of wine, the double daters relocated to the Right Bank Café. It was at this point that Heymann totally repainted Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and her husband. What follows is what Clem wrote:
Carolyn sat stiffly through the two-hour dinner, constantly fidgeting with her suit jacket and a gold choker necklace. The atmosphere was strained and oppressive. I realized then just how precarious their marriage had become. Her conversation with my girlfriend centered exclusively on health foods and diet. […] Whereas John was extrovert and talkative Carolyn seemed glum and moody. She asked few questions and her conversation revolved mainly around herself. Frustrated by the fact that she had aborted her career for John, she discussed going back into the fashion world […]. John snapped at her: “You are not going to do anything. You have not done anything since we got married.” […] They were both angry with each other, but her hostility extended to anyone showing an interest in him. She would be dismissive and rude if anyone approached our table.
Outside the café after eating, Carolyn, as a gesture of final defiance, according to Clem, Mrs. Kennedy brazenly stepped in front of Mr. Kennedy and summoned a taxi cab parked nearby. This act upset and embarrassed JFK, Jr. I believe that by then, Heymann opined, he [John] was resigned to divorce and the inevitable mudslinging. Gone mysteriously were the previously praised happily married couple, a couple with charm and grace who were completely enthralled with each other and contemplating a marvelous future together. The sense of humor enjoyed by both Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy? Well … gone too, sadly. How on Earth did that happen?
It should be crystal clear, considering all of the preceding, along with the differences found in both JFK Jr. articles written by Clem Heymann, the entire I-had-a-ten-year-friendship with John Kennedy Jr. contrivance was just another fantasy formed by Clem’s imagination. Even so, consider this: in his 2007 publication about John and Caroline Kennedy, American Legacy, the double date episode is nowhere to be found. Clem Heymann, without so much as mentioning that she was his girlfriend, acknowledged Gerry Visco:
Gerry Visco, a graduate of the Columbia University School of Journalism and a free-lance writer, was a mainstay researcher and interviewer who also helped proofread and line edit sections of the manuscript.
Heymann asserted many times during his several appearances on television when he talked about his JFK, Jr. friendship, that he took notes and recorded each and every telephone conversation with the junior Kennedy. Nothing pertaining thereto appeared in American Legacy. As Donna Morel correctly noted:
In his 2007 American Legacy: The Story of John and Caroline Kennedy, Heymann merely mentioned his alleged close friendship with John—the subject of his book—in a brief source note. On page 531, Heymann wrote: From 1990 to 1999 the author both met with and telephoned JFK Jr. on a number of occasions. Although his name is not included in the list of interviews, anecdotal information imparted by him has been incorporated into the book.
I interpret anecdotal information to be a source provided story, an anecdote, that has not been verified or cannot be verified. A denotation for anecdotal: (of an account) not necessarily true or reliable, based on personal accounts rather than facts or research or science. So, C. David Heymann, arguably the worst prevaricator and outright liar who ever wrote a book, suggested, even asserted, that the Prince of Camelot was an unreliable source. That must be Clem’s most incredible and amazing statement, if not an admission of his own lying and guilt.
