Jackie Kennedy — Guilt-Ridden Widow’s Assassination Secret

Jackie Onassis was haunted to her grave by heartbreaking secret guilt over John F. Kennedy's assassination — convinced she could have saved his life even after the first bullet was fired in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963!

Family insiders even told The National ENQUIRER that Jackie's crippling guilt had even driven her to block new inquiries into her husband's controversial death. "She knows she couldn't face having to testify," said an insider — noting that Jackie had already struggled to express her eternal regret while facing the Warren Commission and reliving her husband's final moments.

"I was looking the other way, to the left," she said, "I used to think if I only had been looking to the right, I would have seen the first shot that hit him. Then I could have pulled him down, and then the second shot would not have hit him."

But, sadly, the famous Zapruder footage of the shooting shows that even when Jackie turned to face the wounded president, she remained seated and stared at him for seven seconds. When she finally made a move, it was to scramble out of her seat and onto the back trunk of the convertible.

"The excuses she later tendered for her abortive flight seemed to change with the seasons," said historian C. David Haymann. "She told the Warren Commission that she had no recollection of ever having climbed onto the trunk of the car."

"She told author William Manchester," continued Haymann, "that she had crawled out to try to retrieve a portion of her husband's head." Jackie also had to live with the knowledge that Nellie Connally, the wife of Texas governor John Connally, had quickly pulled her wounded husband into her lap and out of the line of fire.

"Poor Jackie's never gotten over the guilt she feels for not thinking of pushing her husband down on the backseat when the first shot rang out," said the family insider. "Even though every assassination investigator involved in the case said there was nothing she could have done to save the president's life, she still believed she could have prevented the tragedy!"