Author Tina Flaherty is defending Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ privacy after an Irish college released intimate letters from Jackie to Father Joseph Leonard. Flaherty said it was distasteful that the letters are set to be auctioned off June 10.
In the letters, Jackie admits she knew about JFK chasing other women: “He’s like my father in a way — loves the chase and is bored with the conquest — and once married, needs proof he’s still attractive, so flirts with other women and resents you. I saw how that nearly killed Mummy.”
After JFK’s assassination, she admitted, “I am so bitter against God.”
Flaherty, speaking at a signing of her book “What Jackie Taught Us” Thursday, said her problem was, “not that these personal views will be known … it’s that the correspondence with the priest was private [and] that they shouldn’t be sold. I would like my friend [autograph expert] Ken Rendell to take a look at these.”
But Leonard wrote letters in response that are held at the Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.
All Hallows College in Dublin obtained the letters after Leonard’s death and says they are up for sale due to a lack of resources, explaining that Jackie wrote to the clergyman as a friend, not in the form of confession.
Flaherty’s best seller is being reissued to mark the 20th anniversary of Jackie’s death on Monday.
Flaherty, a neighbor in the Fifth Avenue building where Jackie lived her last 30 years, added that New Yorkers should take a moment to fondly remember Jackie, who famously stood up to politicians to help save Grand Central Terminal.