JOHN F. KENNEDY’s daughter CAROLINE has the image of a dignified lawyer and an all-American princess. But behind that mask lurks a greedy phony who’s shamefully hawking her family’s mementos to the highest bidder!
That is the shocking accusation made by insiders who insist that the heiress’ staggering $278 million fortune isn’t enough to stop her from peddling historic items many feel should be in museums.
A Kennedy family insider told The ENQUIRER: “Clearly Caroline’s greed knows no bounds. She has infuriated family and friends. Frankly, they feel like she’s cashing in on the Kennedy family’s terrible tragedies and selling out Camelot.”
Just two years after her mom Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died of cancer in 1994, Caroline put the former first lady’s personal possessions on the block, netting a whopping $34.5 million, says a source.
Now on the eve of the 50th anniversary of her father’s Nov. 22, 1963, assassination, she’s selling the land around her mom’s Martha’s Vineyard getaway for a staggering $45 million!
The 55-year-old’s blatant cash-grab has led one source to fume: “She’s a shameless fake and huckster.”
Meanwhile, the Kennedy family insider told The ENQUIRER: “Her mother must be spinning in her grave. Jackie valued her privacy above all. Now her most personal items are in the hands of strangers to gawk at and pass around.
“It seems that Caroline doesn’t care at all about her family’s legacy and place in history.
“She has coldheartedly taken all the memorabilia and historic artifacts and sold them like a tacky garage sale. But this garage sale has raked in tens of millions of dollars. It’s just plain greed!”
Many believe she should be putting items in a museum where the American people can see them instead of turning the historic treasures into cold cash, says a source.
“But everything is winding up as trophies for wealthy private collectors,” the insider notes.
“Caroline is held up as the perfect Kennedy, untouched by the many scandals of her cousins and uncles, and she plays into that image big-time.
“But she’s living a lie.”
Caroline’s first yard sale auction following her mom’s death netted $34.5 million, according to the “New York Post.”
Windfalls included a $100 hat box selling for $31,625, a $150 foot stool going for $33,350 and a $900 lamp fetching $48,875.
And two of JFK’s beloved rocking chairs sold for nearly $900,000.
Shamelessly, Caroline even sold the doors from Jackie’s White House dressing room, complete with their hinges, says the newspaper.
The auction, which took place with JFK Jr.’s reluctant consent, later sickened her brother, who died in a 1999 plane crash. The gold-rush left him wracked with guilt, revealed another source.
“The whole sale process is causing him a lot of anxiety,” a source said at the time of the original sales.
John just couldn’t get used to the idea of peddling family possessions to the highest bidder, says the source.
But that didn’t stop his sister.
She reportedly started tracking down all the memorabilia she could get her hands on. “Evidently $34.5 million wasn’t enough for her,” charges a businessman who owns a large Kennedy collection.
In 2005, Caroline auctioned off “old magazines, wicker baskets, a doorstop, chipped jars, a pair of tarnished candlesticks” and a sugar bowl that fetched an outrageous $7,200.
Her aunt, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, felt Caroline was selling items that belonged to her own parents and grandparents. So JFK’s sister bid on the stuff to prevent it from going to strangers. Caroline claimed some of the auction proceeds would go to charity, yet she never “disclosed how much, if any, went there,” says a source.
And she is also accused of cashing in on her famous name by publishing several books, filled with other people’s work – like a collection of poems which she claimed were her mother’s favorites.
“Another book contained 13 essays by other writers, but with her name on the book jacket,” says a source. “To claim she’s an author under those circumstances is just a lie.”
But Caroline reportedly raked in $4 million for the books. Further adding to the furor, she even sold off recorded interviews her mother gave after JFK’s assassination, says the source.
“Jackie ordered the tapes kept secret until 50 years after her death, but Caroline sold them only 17 years after her mother’s death,” the source notes.
Now, the mother of three grown kids is under fire for using her name and connections to nab an appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Japan.
But one outraged source slammed Caroline as a “profit-minded serial holder of non-jobs.” Despite her law degree from Columbia University, she was never a practicing attorney. She even let her law license lapse twice. She’s more into dabbling than hard work, critics charge.
“Caroline is the best-known living member of America’s most famous political family, but she isn’t the kind of power-player other ambassadors were,” charges Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute.
“She has no prior experience in government or business.”
And as The ENQUIRER has reported, her 27-year marriage to Ed Schlossberg, 68, is on the rocks. But she’s putting on a show of togetherness for the sake of her diplomatic post, says a source. Schlossberg was dead set against her foreign adventure, but Caroline took it and doomed her marriage.
