Onassis began receiving chemotherapy in January of 1994. She publicly disclosed her diagnosis, saying initially that the prognosis looked good. She even continued to work as an editor at Doubleday. But by March her cancer had spread to her spinal cord and brain. When the cancer spread to her liver in May of 1994, doctors deemed her condition terminal. As “America’s Widow” depicts, Onassis decided to leave New York Hospital of her own volition on May 18, choosing to spend her remaining time at her Upper East Side home. The next evening, at 10:15 p.m., Jackie O died in her sleep with her children by her side.
Love Story’s third episode eschews the fox-hunt accident, instead choosing to portray Jackie’s deteriorating condition at home. An early scene finds Watts as Onassis sitting by her lit fireplace, going through her old letters, rereading each one and then tossing them into the fire. “I don’t need my personal correspondence memorialized in The Smithsonian,” she says when Kelly’s John asks her why she is destroying her keepsakes. According to Jackie’s former lover, architect Jack Warnecke—whom she fell for while he designed JFK’s presidential grave memorial—Onassis really did make a habit of burning her old letters as her health declined.
John F. Kennedy Jr, Caroline Kennedy, and Jacquline Onassis Kennedy at the rededication for the John F. Kennedy President Library and Museum in Boston on Oct. 29, 1993.John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
Journalist J. Randy Taraborrelli interviewed Warnecke in 1998 for his biography of the first lady, Jackie: Public, Private, Secret, which was released in 2023 and excerpted in People. Given Onassis’s fiercely private nature, Warnecke requested that Taraborrelli not publish their interview until 10 years after Warnecke’s own death, which occurred in 2010 when the architect was 91. “As I took my seat, Jackie handed me a stack of envelopes neatly tied together with yarn,” Warnecke told Taraborrelli. “My presence that evening was part of a ritual. Every night that week, she was inviting a trusted friend or family member to her home to take part in it.”
According to Jackie: Public, Private, Secret, Jackie read each letter before placing it into the fireplace. “There were letters from Jackie’s children, John and Caroline…. There were also letters from Jack Kennedy, Aristotle Onassis, her father, Jack Bouvier, and even a few from me,” Warnecke told Taraborrelli. “She held one of the photographs and stared at it. It was her and Jack [Kennedy] on the day of his inauguration. ‘Keep this for me, will you?’ she asked.”
Before she died, Jackie O wrote one final letter to her son. According to Us Weekly, in the three-episode CNN docuseries American Prince, family friend Gary Ginsberg revealed that Jackie O wrote a heartfelt letter full of words of encouragement to her then 33-year-old son. “I understand the pressure you’ll forever have to endure as a Kennedy, even though we brought you into this world as an innocent,” she wrote, repeated almost word for word in the Love Story episode. “You, especially, have a place in history. No matter what course in life you choose, all I can ask is that you…continue to make me, the Kennedy family, and yourself proud.”
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and John F. Kennedy Jr. attends a tribute on the anniversary of the birth of John F. Kennedy, May 24, 1993.Brooks Kraft LLC/Sygma/Getty Images